, and ended defeated in St. Helena
after pandering for twenty years to the appetite of idiots for glory and
bloodshed; waging war as "a great game"; and finding in a field strewn
with corpses "un beau spectacle." In short, as strong a magnet to fools
as the others, though so much abler.

*Our Own True Position*.

Now comes the question, in what position did this result of a mad theory
and a hopelessly incompetent application of it on the part of Potsdam
place our own Government? It left us quite clearly in the position of
the responsible policeman of the west. There was nobody else in Europe
strong enough to chain "the mad dog." Belgium and Holland, Norway and
Sweden, Denmark and Switzerland could hardly have been expected to take
that duty on themselves, even if Norway and Sweden had not good reason
to be anti-Russian, and the Dutch capitalists were not half convinced
that their commercial prosperity would be greater under German than
under native rule. It will not be contended that Spain could have done
anything; and as to Italy, it was doubtful whether she did not consider
herself still a member of the Triple Alliance. It was evidently England
or nobody. For England to have refrained, from hurling herself into the
fray, horse, foot, and artillery, was impossible from every point of
view. From the democratic point of view it would have meant an
acceptance of the pretension of which Potsdam, by attacking the French
Republic, had made itself the champion: that is, the pretension of the
Junker class to dispose of the world on Militarist lines at the expense
of the lives and limbs of the masses. From the international Socialist
point of view, it would have been the acceptance of the extreme
nationalist view that the people of other countries are foreigners, and
that it does not concern us if they choose to cut one another's throats.
Our Militarist Junkers cried "If we let Germany conquer France it will
be our turn next." Our romantic Junkers added "and serve us right too:
what man will pity us when the hour strikes for us, if we skulk now?"
Even the wise, who loathe war, and regard it as such a dishonour and
disgrace in itself that all its laurels cannot hide its brand of Cain,
had to admit that police duty is necessary and that war must be made on
such war as the Germans had made by attacking France in an avowed
attempt to substitute a hegemony of cannon for the comity of nations.
There was no alternative. Had the For