it can imagine. There is far franker criticism of militarism in Germany
than there is of reactionary Toryism in this country, and it is more
free to speak its mind.

That, however, is a question by the way. It is not the main thing that I
have to say here. What I have to say here is that in Great Britain--I
will not discuss the affairs of any of our Allies--there are groups and
classes of people, not numerous, not representative, but placed in high
and influential positions and capable of free and public utterance, who
are secretly and bitterly hostile to this great War Aim, which inspires
all the Allied peoples. These people are permitted to deny--our peculiar
censorship does not hamper them--loudly and publicly that we are
fighting for democracy and world freedom; "Tosh," they say to our dead
in the trenches, "you died for a mistake"; they jeer at this idea of a
League of Nations making an end to war, an idea that has inspired
countless brave lads to face death and such pains and hardships as outdo
even death itself; they perplex and irritate our Allies by propounding
schemes for some precious economic league of the British Empire--that is
to treat all "foreigners" with a common base selfishness and stupid
hatred--and they intrigue with the most reactionary forces in Russia.

These British reactionaries openly, and with perfect impunity, represent
our war as a thing as mean and shameful as Germany's attack on Belgium,
and they do it because generosity and justice in the world is as
terrible to them as dawn is to the creatures of the night. Our Tories
blundered into this great war, not seeing whither it would take them. In
particular it is manifest now by a hundred signs that they dread the
fall of monarchy in Germany and Austria. Far rather would they make the
most abject surrenders to the Kaiser than deal with a renascent
Republican Germany. The recent letter of Lord Lansdowne, urging a peace
with German imperialism, was but a feeler from the pacifist side of this
most un-English, and unhappily most influential, section of our public
life. Lord Lansdowne's letter was the letter of a Peer who fears
revolution more than national dishonour.

But it is the truculent wing of this same anti-democratic movement that
is far more active. While our sons suffer and die for their comforts and
conceit, these people scheme to prevent any communication between the
Republican and Socialist classes in Germany and the Allied populat