the treaty of peace, so that we might
know what we were fighting for, and how far we were bound to go, the
better? Instead of which we sign a ridiculous "scrap of paper" to save
ourselves the intolerable fatigue of thought.

*Belgium Crucified Between the European Powers.*

And now, before I leave the subject of Belgium, what have we done for
Belgium? Have we saved her soil from invasion? Were we at her side with
half a million men when the avalanche fell on her? Or were we safe in
our own country praising her heroism in paragraphs which all contrived
to convey an idea that the Belgian soldier is about four feet high, but
immensely plucky for his size? Alas, when the Belgian soldier cried:
"Where are the English?" the reply was "a mass of concrete as large as a
big room," blown into the air by a German siege gun, falling back and
crushing him into the earth we had not succeeded in saving from the
worst of the horrors of war. We have not protected Belgium: Belgium has
protected us at the cost of being conquered by Germany. It is now our
sacred duty to drive the Germans out of Belgium. Meanwhile we might at
least rescue her refugees by a generous grant of public money from the
caprices of private charity. We need not press our offer to lend her
money: German capitalists will do that for her with the greatest
pleasure when the war is over. I think the Government realizes that now;
for I note the after-thought that a loan from us need not bear interest.

Now that we begin to see where we really are, what practical morals can
we draw?

*Unpreparedness the Price of Secrecy.*

First, that our autocratic foreign policy, in which the Secretary for
Foreign Affairs is always a Junker, and makes war and concludes war
without consulting the nation, or confiding in it, or even refraining
from deceiving it as to his intentions, leads inevitably to a disastrous
combination of war and unpreparedness for war. Wars are planned which
require huge expeditionary armies trained and equipped for war. But as
such preparation could not be concealed from the public, it is simply
deferred until the war is actually declared and begun, at the most
frightful risk of such an annihilation of our little peace army as we
escaped by the skin of our teeth at Mons and Cambrai. The military
experts tell us that it takes four months to make an infantry and six to
make a cavalry soldier. And our way of getting an army able to fight the
German army is