acts) that England is a guardian of the world's liberty, and
not to bad law about an obsolete treaty, and cant about the diabolical
personal disposition of the Kaiser, and the wounded propriety of a
peace-loving England, and all the rest of the slosh and tosh that has
been making John Bull sick for months past. No doubt at first, when we
were all clasping one another's hands very hard and begging one another
not to be afraid, almost anything was excusable. Even the war notes of
Mr. Garvin, which stood out as the notes of a gentleman amid a welter of
scurrilous rubbish and a rather blackguardly _Punch_ cartoon mocking the
agony of Berlin (_Punch_ having turned its non-interventionist coat very
promptly), had sometimes to run: "We know absolutely nothing of what is
happening at the front, except that the heroism of the British troops
will thrill the ages to the last syllable of recorded time," or words to
that effect. But now it is time to pull ourselves together; to feel our
muscle; to realize the value of our strength and pluck; and to tell the
truth unashamed like men of courage and character, not to shirk it like
the official apologists of a Foreign Office plot.

*What Germany Should Have Done.*

And first, as I despise critics who put people in the wrong without
being able to set them right, I shall, before I go any further with my
criticism of our official position, do the Government and the Foreign
Office the service of finding a correct official position for them; for
I admit that the popular position, though sound as far as it goes, is
too crude for official use. This correct official position can be found
only by considering what Germany should have done, and might have done
had she not been, like our own Junkers, so fascinated by the Militarist
craze, and obsessed by the chronic Militarist panic, that she was "in
too great hurry to bid the devil good morning." The matter is simple
enough: she should have entrusted the security of her western frontier
to the public opinion of the west of Europe and to America, and fought
Russia, if attacked, with her rear not otherwise defended. The
Militarist theory is that we, France and England, would have immediately
sprung at her from behind; but that is just how the Militarist theory
gets its votaries into trouble by assuming that Europe is a chess board.
Europe is not a chess board; but a populous continent in which only a
very few people are engaged in military chess;