phistries, false pathos, and appeals to
their prejudices; the army and navy must dazzle them with pageants and
bands and thundering salvos and romantic tales; the king must cut
himself off from humanity and become an idol. There is no escape whilst
such classes exist. Mahomet, the boldest prophet that ever threw down
the gage of the singleness and supremacy of God to a fierce tribe of
warriors who worshipped stones as devotedly as we worship dukes and
millionaires, could not govern them by religious truth, and was forced
to fall back on revolting descriptions of hell and the day of judgment,
invented by him for the purpose. What else could he do if his people
were not to be abandoned to their own destruction? If it is an axiom of
diplomacy that the people must not be told the truth, that is not in the
least because, for example, Sir Edward Grey has a personal taste for
mendacity; it is a necessity imposed by the fact that the people are
incapable of the truth. In the end, lying becomes a reflex action with
diplomatists; and we cannot even issue a penny bluebook without
beginning it with the quite unprovoked statement that "no crime has ever
aroused deeper or more general horror throughout Europe" than the
assassination of the Archduke. The real tragedy was that the violent
death of a fellow creature should have aroused so little.

*Divided Against Ourselves*.

This state of things would be bad enough if the governing classes really
sought the welfare of the governed, and were deceiving them for their
own good. But they are doing nothing of the sort. They are using their
power secondarily, no doubt, to uphold the country in which they have so
powerful and comfortable a position; but primarily their object is to
maintain that position by the organized legal robbery of the poor; and
to that end they would join hands with the German Junkers as against the
working class in Germany and England as readily as Bismarck joined hands
with Thiers to suppress the Commune of Paris. And even if this were not
so, nothing would persuade the working classes that those who sweat them
ruthlessly in commercial enterprise are any more considerate in public
affairs, especially when there is any question of war, by which much
money can be made for rich people who deal in the things most wanted and
most highly paid for in war time: to wit, armaments and money. The
direct interest of our military caste in war accounts for a good deal;
but at