o
moral obligation on the part of the English people so to do. We can best
serve civilization, Europe--including France--and ourselves by remaining
the one power in Europe that has not yielded to the war madness.

This, I believe, will be found to be the firm conviction of the
overwhelming majority of the English people.

Yours faithfully,

NORMAN ANGELL.

4 Kings Bench Walk, Temple, E.C., July 31.

*Why England Came To Be In It*

*By Gilbert K. Chesterton.*

*I.*

Unless we are all mad, there is at the back of the most bewildering
business a story; and if we are all mad, there is no such thing as
madness. If I set a house on fire, it is quite true that I may
illuminate many other people's weaknesses as well as my own. It may be
that the master of the house was burned because he was drunk; it may be
that the mistress of the house was burned because she was stingy, and
perished arguing about the expense of the fire-escape. It is,
nevertheless, broadly true that they both were burned because I set fire
to their house. That is the story of the thing. The mere facts of the
story about the present European conflagration are quite as easy to
tell.

Before we go on to the deeper things which make this war the most
sincere war of human history, it is easy to answer the question of why
England came to be in it at all; as one asks how a man fell down a coal
hole, or failed to keep an appointment. Facts are not the whole truth.
But facts are facts, and in this case the facts are few and simple.

Prussia, France, and England had all promised not to invade Belgium,
because it was the safest way of invading France. But Prussia promised
that if she might break in through her own broken promise and ours she
would break in and not steal. In other words, we were offered at the
same instant a promise of faith in the future and a proposal of perjury
in the present.

Those interested in human origins may refer to an old Victorian writer
of English, who in the last and most restrained of his historical essays
wrote of Frederick the Great, the founder of this unchanging Prussian
policy. After describing how Frederick broke the guarantee he had signed
on behalf of Maria Theresa he then describes how Frederick sought to put
things straight by a promise that was an insult. "If she would but let
him have Silesia, he would, he said, stand by her against any power
which should try to deprive her of her other dominions; as i