The climax of legal lawlessness was reached in France. The
greatest Socialist statesman in Europe, Jaures, was shot and
killed by a gentleman who resented his efforts to avert the war.
M. Clemenceau was shot by another gentleman of less popular
opinions, and happily came off no worse than having to spend a
precautionary couple of days in bed. The slayer of Jaures was
recklessly acquitted: the would-be slayer of M. Clemenceau was
carefully found guilty. There is no reason to doubt that the same
thing would have happened in England if the war had begun with a
successful attempt to assassinate Keir Hardie, and ended with an
unsuccessful one to assassinate Mr Lloyd George.



The Long Arm of War

The pestilence which is the usual accompaniment of war was called
influenza. Whether it was really a war pestilence or not was made
doubtful by the fact that it did its worst in places remote from
the battlefields, notably on the west coast of North America and
in India. But the moral pestilence, which was unquestionably a
war pestilence, reproduced this phenomenon. One would have
supposed that the war fever would have raged most furiously in
the countries actually under fire, and that the others would be
more reasonable. Belgium and Flanders, where over large districts
literally not one stone was left upon another as the opposed
armies drove each other back and forward over it after terrific
preliminary bombardments, might have been pardoned for relieving
their feelings more emphatically than by shrugging their
shoulders and saying, "C'est la guerre." England, inviolate for