War throws a blinding light upon the strength and the weakness of nations, and in England we may claim that we have faced the light without any revelations of which we need feel ashamed. Our mistakes have been rather of temperament than character, and whether in mustering our millions on the voluntary system or surrendering our hard-won liberties to an authority that has shown no sign of suffering from wisdom in excess, or giving fully and freely of our resources to the national cause, we may claim to have shown in our collective capacity a generous response to the most varied and unexpected demands. Incidentally we have discovered in our midst a body of men, happily small in number, and not too significant in position, who would fain embody in our national life the worst vices that we are said to be fighting in the one foe that counts. These men, whose political sagacity exists in inverse ratio to their prejudices, are ever prompting the worst elements in our rulers and threatening and intriguing against the others.

To them war is no frightful necessity imposed upon a free and peaceful people, but a providential opportunity for taking occasion by the hand; the voice is the voice of Prussia, but the hands are English hands.

Our Prussians have always been in evidence, but, while the government of the empire was trusted to their friends, they were content to be quietly active. It is now nearly ten years since a Liberal Government came into power, and with the advent of Radical legislation our Prussians—they call them Tories over here—became active.

When taxation threatened their superfluous wealth, they called heaven and earth to witness that such an outrage had no sanction. When the House of Lords, long the supreme force of obstruction, was threatened they grew frantic, and at many a well-spread board declared themselves ready to dine—I mean die—in the last ditch before submitting to the indignity of democratic government.

When Home Rule was on the tapis they declared for revolution and civil war, and it needed Armageddon to burst the bladder of Sir Edward Carson's threats. In justice be it said that when the tocsin sounded the Tories responded to the nation's need, and forgot for a time their ineffective selves.

But as soon as the gravity of the task was revealed they decided that the authorities were useless without their judgment in aid. Cabal succeeded criticism, plots of exquisite silliness were hatched, matched, and dispatched. Then came the call for more soldiers, and our Prussians turned Conscriptionists.

The suggestion that conscription of men should be associated with conscription of wealth was dismissed as an impertinence, it sufficed if all that others possess were sacrificed for the State. Our Prussians talked incessantly of men and duty, but where finance was concerned they were content to warn the worker not to squander his extra wages earned by unremitting labour during a week seven days long. They saw with clear vision the iniquity of depriving the capitalist of half the wealth he is amassing as a result of the bloodiest war in history, and have protested almost in unison against the decree. They forgot with amazing ease that conscription is the force that has set the Prussian Jack-boot above all law human and divine; they clamoured for it here, doubtless with an eye upon the possibilities of coercing in days to come a proletariat of toilers forced to live under military law in time of peace. Disguised as patriots they thundered from a hundred platforms, they thumped a thousand tubs, while their hirelings in the Press wrote stodgily in admiration and support, pointing out that certain hard-jawed, soulless politicians would alone avail to save England from itself. As though England would endure to-day the undiluted political opinions of a Carson, a Milner, a Halsbury, or a Walter Long. Excellent men, no doubt, but never in their lives less than half a century behind the times.

Politicians and papers were aided by the truth that even the voluntary system has its flaws and hardships, its inequalities and petty tyrannies, and the Prussian remedy for the whip of voluntary service is the scorpion of conscription.

Those who do not agree with our Prussians are traitors to the height, although if our Prussians are patriots Dr. Johnson's definition of patriotism becomes dangerously true.

The question of peace discussion has been the latest consideration of these gentry. Personally I have no use for peace until we have won our victory or suffered our defeat. I believe we shall win, and that our first duties as victors will be to take whatever steps are needed to give peace permanence.

But I cannot follow our Prussians over one yard of their mile-long way. They would impose the methods of Berlin and Vienna upon all who dare to have opinions of their own, they would repress individuality, they would out Herod the Herods of the censorship who daily murder so much childishness, they would in fact reduce free men to the level of the citizens who serve their rulers for "cannon fodder."

In one of the reactionary dailies written by Tories for Tories I have been reading with infinite disgust a tribute of admiration to the "Stern Methods" of the Central Empires in dealing with "War Cranks," i.e. with people whose sense of what they, rightly or wrongly, believe to be truth is so strong that they will sacrifice position, even life, to tell the truth when they see it. "Hungarians," writes our Prussian, "who were only suspected of not approving of the war were interned or publicly shot." Such a policy has more to justify it "than have the liberties which are accorded to certain sects who with their ideas form an insignificant, and almost negligible minority." These sentiments are even worse than the English used to express them. One Hungarian publicist, M. Pazmaudy, aged sixty-nine, went to prison for three months for writing an unpublished letter to a newspaper in which he denounced the war as wholesale murder. A teacher who pointed out to his class that war is the fruit of rulers' jealousy rather than of the people's animosities, a statement that is probably true of nine-tenths of the war recorded by history, was condemned to three years' hard labour. Our anonymous Prussian rejoices in these barbarities, and a paper supposed to represent the educated classes of England is not ashamed to print this revelation of an unsound or distorted mind.

In the early days of the war, Bernard Shaw reminded us that we, too, have our Junkers, and his statement has been proved up to the hilt. Our soldiers and sailors are fighting the Prussians abroad, and it is the duty of those of us who cannot help beyond England's boundaries, to fight the Prussians at home, for it is abundantly clear that we have them in our midst, those who are working night and day to give us Militarism, Absolutism, and every form of Central European slavery under another name. They desire an England of conscript workmen, they seek the destruction of Trade Unionism, and the abolition of socialism, though it is only by adopting that dread creed that the Government contrived to save our credit and to feed us. They wish to destroy the German militarism, and what it stands for, but only to take over the whole business, lock, stock, and barrel as a going concern. The truth is that the Tories can no more change their skin than the leopard his spots.

It is to them the ideal, merely the ideal, in the wrong hands. They see beyond the horizon of war the dawning of a democratic era that shall destroy privilege, and make our national freedom greater than it has ever been, and the prospect is more bitter to them than defeat. So while our men, so recently civilians, are proving the strength and resources of comparative freedom—what has been done is as little with what still remains to be done—our Prussians are putting forward all manner of chains for unfettered limbs, and are declaring that without them nothing can save the Empire. It is pleasant to reflect that after this war comes to its appointed close the vigorous democracies of Canada and Australia that have followed the United States along the road of political freedom will be finding representatives at the Council Board of Empire, and that they will be alert and vigorous to put an end to the machinations of our Prussians whose attack upon liberty will not readily be forgotten. When we attempt to measure the sacrifices that have been made in freedom's name since August, 1914, when we remember the spirit that has led men contentedly into the jaws of death, when we understand what our fighters have fought for, there is an indescribable sense of loathing for the men who, secure in England, are plotting to transfer Prussian principles across the North Sea. Their failure to achieve anything commensurate with the villainy of the attempt is neither palliation nor excuse.

Every one who has studied social conditions knows that our national ability to pit the unprepared British Empire against Germany armed to the teeth, has been due to the fact that our Empire holds millions who believe from the bottom of their hearts that it is worth living in and dying for. What would the Prussians make of our Empire if they were allowed to direct it? A happy hunting-ground for Junkers and a hell upon Earth for free men is the very best that they could accomplish.

Political insight, democratic foresight, prevision of the inevitable march of events, all these gifts are denied them. They have no sympathy with any freedom that could exist beyond the realms of the privileged classes, they are too blind to see the writing on the wall that tells them they have been found wanting.

This war has witnessed plenty of mistakes, some trivial, some serious; it has witnessed the birth of a certain number of oppressive and retrograde measures, and the death of national liberties of which we look with hope, even with certainty for the joyful resurrection.

Whatever has been bad, retrograde, or dangerous to democracy has won the unstinted approval of our Prussians; every other act of our rulers they have condemned.