s
at a station unless we make some intelligent preventive provision.
Unless we do, and if, as is highly probable, peace puts no immediate
stop to international malignity, the Germans will be bigger fools than I
think them if they do not try to get hold of these public services. It
is a matter of primary importance in the outlook of every country in
Europe, therefore, that it should insist upon and secure responsible
native ownership of every newspaper and news and book distributing
agency, and the most drastic punishment for newspaper corruption. Given
that guarantee against foreign bribery, we may, I think, let free speech
rage. This is so much a matter of common sense that I cannot imagine
even British "wait and see" waiting for the inevitable assault upon our
national journalistic virtue that will follow the peace.

So I spread out the considerations that I think justify our forecasting,
in a very changed Great Britain and a changed Europe, firstly, a legal
profession with a quickened conscience, a sense of public function and a
reformed organisation, and, secondly, a Press, which is recognised and
held accountable in law and in men's minds, as an estate of the realm,
as something implicitly under oath to serve the State. I do not agree
with Professor Michel's pessimistic conclusion that peace will bring
back exacerbated party politics and a new era of futility to the
democratic countries. I believe that the tremendous demonstration of
this war (a demonstration that gains weight with every week of our
lengthening effort), of the waste and inefficiency of the system of
1913-14, will break down at last even the conservatism of the most
rigidly organised and powerful and out-of-date of all professions.

It is not only that I look to the indignation and energy of intelligent
men who are outside our legal and political system to reform it, but to
those who are in it now. A man may be quietly parasitic upon his mother,
and yet incapable of matricide. So much of our national energy and
ability has been attracted to the law in Great Britain that our nation,
with our lawyers in modern clothing instead of wigs and gowns, lawyers
who have studied science and social theory instead of the spoutings of
Cicero and the loquacious artfulness of W.E. Gladstone, lawyers who look
forward at the destiny of their country instead of backward and at the
markings on their briefs, may yet astonish the world. The British lawyer
really holds t