e it.

It was that the Government feared opposition to our entering into the
war would come from a Radico-Socialist literary clique in London, from a
section of the Liberal press, and from certain Liberal and Labor
politicians who had been deceived by German professors and other
missionaries of the Kaiser into thinking the German peril did not exist.
When Belgium was invaded most of these misguided ones were unable to
cling any longer to their "keep out of it" policy, and then the
Government felt free to act. Yet the Government need not have waited,
because with the facts before them the people as a whole would perfectly
have understood the necessity of fighting even had Belgium not been
invaded.

Henceforward the general public must be kept informed of what is
happening in the international world. Foreign politics must be conducted
with greater publicity. There, at least, Bernard Shaw is right, but this
is a reform which he and his fellow-men have failed to effect, whereas
women, had they been voters, would have demanded and secured it long
ago.

Now, although undue diplomatic secrecy, always wrong, will be especially
wrong when the terms of peace come to be made, sentimentality will
certainly be more mischievous still. It is difficult to resist the
conclusion that Bernard Shaw's writings on the war are intended as an
appeal to sentimentality--an appeal that Germany at the close of the war
shall have treatment which, by being more than just to her, would be
less than just to the countries whom she has attacked, and would mean a
recurrence of this appalling war in after years.

Before the war specious words were used to cloak the German policy of
aggression which has plunged the world in horror and is martyrizing
peoples. In view of the coming victory of the Allies, the same tactics
will be adopted by the German militarists, and it behooves Bernard Shaw
to beware lest even without intent he serve as their tool. Men such as
he who believe that while they can never be in the wrong, their country
can never be in the right, are just the men who are in danger of
stumbling at this time.

[Illustration: CHRISTABEL PANKHURST.

_Photo (C) by Underwood & Underwood._

_See Page 68_]

[Illustration: JAMES M. BARRIE. _See Page 100_]

*Comment by Readers of Shaw*

*Shaw Has Made Minister von Jagow's Remark on a "Scrap of Paper"
Understandable.*

_To the Editor of The New York Times_:

Most hearty th