ause? The
third involves an estimate of the future and of the part which British
public opinion can and should play in shaping it: What are the issues
involved in the various belligerent countries? What should be the
principles of a just settlement? How can Great Britain best use her
influence in the cause of human progress and for the welfare of the peoples
involved in the war?

It is with the second and especially with the third of these
responsibilities that this volume is concerned.

"What is the war about?" "Are we fighting in a just cause?" Every one by
now has asked himself this question, and most people have studied some at
least of the evidence, and tried to satisfy themselves as to the answer.
The Foreign Office White Paper and numberless books and pamphlets have
enlightened the public on many of the questions at issue. Yet the fact
remains that the necessity of this educative campaign involves a confession
of failure--or at least of grave neglect--on the part of British democracy.
Under our democratic constitution the people of Great Britain have assumed
the responsibility for the management of their own affairs. One great
department of those affairs, the most vital of all, they and their
representatives have systematically neglected. Deeply engaged and
interested in domestic problems, they have left the control of their
foreign relations in the hands of expert advisers. And so it was with
something like stupefaction that they discovered, one day in August, that
they were called upon to honour the obligations contracted in their name.

There has been no desire to evade those obligations. But there has been a
very real desire to understand them, and also a fixed determination never
again to allow such a lack of contact, on vital issues, between the mind of
the people and the activities of their ministers.

But no mere changes in the machinery of democratic control can avail to
save the people from the consequences of their own ignorance and neglect.
There is only one way in which we can achieve full Democracy in this
country, and that is through Education.

In the sphere of domestic affairs, particularly in connection with social
and industrial questions, the people have slowly realised this hard truth.
After a generation or more of attempts and failures and disillusionments
many thousands of workpeople have learnt the lesson that power without
knowledge is not power at all, and that knowledge, whether for