this case? Or rather, how would the Germans
reply to it if their official Militarist and Kaiserist panjandrums had
the wit to find the effective reply? Undoubtedly they would say that our
Social-Democratic professions are all very fine, but that our conversion
to them is suspiciously sudden and recent. They would remark that it is
a little difficult for a nation in deadly peril to trust its existence
to a foreign public opinion which has not only never been expressed by
the people who really control England's foreign policy, but is flatly
opposed to all their known views and prejudices. They would ask why,
instead of making an _Entente_ with France and Russia and refusing to
give Germany any assurance concerning its object except that we would
not pledge ourselves to remain neutral if the Franco-Russian _Entente_
fell on Germany, we did not say straight out in 1912 (when they put the
question flatly to us), and again last July when Sazonoff urged us so
strongly to shew our hand, that if Germany attacked France we should
fight her, Russia or no Russia (a far less irritating and provocative
attitude), although we knew full well that an attack on France through
Belgium would be part of the German program if the Russian peril became
acute. They would point out that if our own Secretary for Foreign
Affairs openly disclaimed any knowledge of the terms of the
Franco-Russian alliance, it was hard for a German to believe that they
were wholly fit for publication. In short, they would say "If you were
so jolly wise and well intentioned before the event, why did not your
Foreign Minister and your ambassadors in Berlin and Vienna and St.
Petersburg--we beg pardon, Petrograd--invite us to keep the peace and
rely on western public opinion instead of refusing us every pledge
except the hostile one to co-operate with France against us in the North
Sea, and making it only too plain to us that your policy was a Junker
policy as much as ours, and that we had nothing to hope from your
goodwill? What evidence had we that you were playing any other game than
this Militarist chess of our own, which you now so piously renounce, but
which none of you except a handful of Socialists whom you despise and
Syndicalists whom you imprison on Militarist pretexts has opposed for
years past, though it has been all over your Militarist anti-German
platforms and papers and magazines? Are your Social-Democratic
principles sincere, or are they only a dagger y