It seems only a few years since Truth, if not precisely popular, enjoyed a certain reputation, a little definite vogue. To tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth was not only a nominal obligation in the courts of law, but a tradition among a certain class, small but not negligible, of English men and women. Truth was found in all sorts of places, you met it sometimes in Parliament, generally on the back benches, now and again it was seen or suspected in the Press; it frequented the Pulpit, and was not unknown upon the public platform if the gathering was not one of the political rallies that it resolutely ignored. To be sure when intended for the appreciation or admiration of sensitive folk, it was always dressed up in garments that hid a part of its native ugliness, and over the hard, unrelenting features a certain veil, enforcing a decent obscurity, was scrupulously drawn. The higher Truth climbed in the social scale, the more the trappings, the thicker the veil, while on the lowest rungs of the social ladder there were none to supply dress or wrappings, and Truth stood revealed in such an ugly guise that only the strong minded dared to look. When they told what they had seen, all those who lived on any of the rungs above them deplored at the top of their voices the indecency of the revelation and devised thicker veils and heavier drapery. And yet for all men and all women, according to their capacity for looking courageously before them, Truth existed. Among most of those who live in comfort there was a tradition that Truth had borrowed the head of Medusa the Gorgon lady who incontinently turned to stone all those who looked upon her, and was ultimately tricked out of life and activity by Perseus; on the other hand, the people of the underworld, the world that does the rough work, had looked upon Truth and found the cold implacable eyes had in them more of stimulus than death. They even went so far as to hope that in times yet to come the robing and veiling of Truth would be regarded as an offence and the duty of looking Truth straight in the face, would be obligatory upon kings, statesmen, clergymen, county and district councillors, journalists and lawyers alike. Against the gross indelicacy of this democratic suggestion there was not unnaturally a revolt, as many of those people just mentioned had every reason to fear that such a decision would rob them of occupations that, if not actually profitable to their fellow-men, were at least sometimes dignified and very often lucrative.

Then came War, and the people of all combatant countries formed amid and despite their bitter antagonisms an unwritten, unsigned compact to the effect that whatever the divergence of their aims and policies, they would at least conduct one part of their campaign in common, against a common foe. Agreements having lost their validity, it was impossible to reduce this one to writing, and they knew, too, that actions speak louder than words. So with unanimity that forgot all causes of dispute, the fighting powers found time and means and occasion in the midst of their awful traffic to wage war against Truth. In this country the naked Truth may no longer find a resting place, if the well in which Truth is said to dwell could be located it would incontinently be filled up and no material would be regarded as too poisonous for the purpose. As the well cannot be located, the Defence of the Realm Act has, in these islands instituted sumptuary laws so strict that Truth is now robed, veiled, and manacled past recognition. The delight of those who have suffered from the constant fear of the apparition, who have found their enjoyment of the feast of life constantly menaced by the report that Truth was in the neighbourhood, is unbounded. It is admitted by every government that Truth is one of the greatest obstacles to the proper progress of universal destruction and all Governments have substituted in the interests of public digestion Fiction, a far more popular creation and more palatable too. They call it by the title of Official Report. If one Report contradicts and is contradicted by all the others, you can at least pay your money and take your choice and the task of selection is eased by the certain knowledge that Truth is not admitted to any.

In the Parliaments of the world responsible speakers have but to declare that the irresponsible ones are endeavouring to bring back Truth to the high assembly, and every one of Fiction's countless adherents will rise in his place to protest. In the pulpit, to which Truth still seeks admittance, the veil has become a mask, and the garments have a double thickness, but in the Courts of whatever kind and in Fleet Street it has been found that the precautions in vogue before the war are sufficiently adequate.

To any mortal such persecution had been fatal, but Truth is immortal and persists. Not even the Jews whose sufferings are eternal, or the Belgians, Poles, Armenians, Servians, and others whose persecution though intolerable is temporary, strive to recover their vanished freedom as resolutely as Truth. The harder you use it, the greater its persistence. Drive it out at the door it returns by the window, an indefatigable, untiring immortal, seemingly unconscious of the loss of popularity, convinced that it has a place in the great scheme of things. It whispers to kings on their thrones, and to chancellors in their studies, to statesmen on Government and opposition benches, to clergymen in their pulpits, lawyers in their consulting rooms; passing by janitor, secretary, and a sub-editorial array, it even invades the editor's desk, persistent though ignored. Trampled upon, cast aside, ignored, eviscerated, turned inside out, confuted, obscured, denied, perverted, misunderstood and damned, it still labours, powerful as in the days when old Thomas Carlyle watched its progress through the world and hailed it alone immortal. With a striking disregard of the laws of emergency and confusion, it declines to be regarded as an enemy alien. With an utter contempt for a Fiction entrenched behind all the barbed wires of popularity, it whispers the most disconcerting statements to those who hoped or believed that it was dead. None can say what form the instructions, warnings, and admonitions take, but all may guess them, and the temptation so to do is ever present.

I think that the one outstanding fact upon which Truth insists is that until it is allowed to prevail there can be no peace in the world, that even victories must be unavailing while the hard-won lessons they bring are taught in terms of fiction. Truth tells us that the fog of war is hardly more horrible than the fog of falsehood; product of a poison gas that is manufactured by every country alike. To the Prussians who are in our midst striving to fasten upon us the fetters fashioned by our enemies for the control of all liberty, comes the secret warning that such fetters will not fit the Anglo-Saxon people, that the rivets will not hold, that they will be torn asunder and even used as weapons against all forgers. Truth will tell those who seek to effect economies at the expense of education that only sound training and diligent application to every form of activity can enable us to hold our own against Germany, whether the defeat of that country be whole or partial. Truth says the will of the people is being forged as of wrought iron upon the fields of war, and that the days of privilege are numbered. Truth whispers that the burdens imposed upon those yet unborn, not only in Great Britain, but in every belligerent country can only be met if they are shared by one and all, not with any sense of precedence or class distinction but in a brotherhood that embraces all who labour whether with hand or brain to the common end. Truth will whisper to those who shrink before strong, whole-hearted and courageous methods necessary to bring all classes into line that the needs of the time are paramount and that those who will not steer the ship of State to a safe harbour because of the adverse winds and storming waves that lie ahead, must yield to other pilots cast in sterner mould. It will point out that the old days of political trifling and dalliance are numbered, that right and wrong, bravery and cowardice, energy and inaction, whatever their future, can no longer be weighed in the unjust balances of the party system. Truth will say that our empire needs the best service, not only of every man, but of every woman, and in consequence, that both must be rendered fit to serve and allowed to express themselves to the State's best advantage without reference to pedigree or sex. It will declare that an England in which the labours of six men out of seven are valued at three pounds a week or under, cannot endure for the simple reason that under the present social system, hundreds of thousands of really capable people who could deserve well of their country are doomed by poverty to ineffectiveness. Truth will say bluntly that the future demands statesmen rather than politicians, men in their prime rather than men in their decline. It will whisper of the vigorous democracies that the genius of empire has brought into being, the democracies that have striven so nobly to save the empire and must—not for reasons of sentiment alone—play their part in administering it. There will not be wanting the reminder that the season in which crises, military, social, political, can be smothered in platitudes is past, not in our time to return.

If Truth were to proclaim these facts duly pointed and applied, together with many another of like weight and significance from the house-tops, the Defence of the Realm Act would intervene promptly, strongly and passionately on behalf of Fiction; but the Act has limitations. The Still Small Voice evades the Act every time, it speaks less from the lips than to the hearts of men. There is no humbug so highly placed as to be able to shut it out, there is no man or woman so befogged or bewildered by the horror of the hour that he cannot hear the silences made audible. For Truth is not cast out of life, it is but despised and rejected by the world's rulers and even they cannot shut out the voice that whispers through all their waking hours, for while many men can deceive others, few, if any, are permitted entirely to deceive themselves in times like these. So many soft conventions have fallen by the way, so many of life's excuses and subterfuges have fallen into everlasting nothingness. Before the horror-stricken eyes of authority the world over, Truth, muzzled, bedraped, masked, and shrouded appears again like the skeleton at the feast, like the grinning skull that accompanied the Roman Emperors on their Triumphs to remind them that they too were mortal. Slowly yet with deliberation Truth is beginning to shed the coverings that officialdom had heaped in such designed profusion. The day is not far distant when the fetters will fall from the limbs, the shroud from the dread face, and in that hour not all the Acts and Proscriptions will avail to frame a covering. Europe, bleeding, sore, wounded, poverty-stricken, shattered beyond recognition, will see Truth face to face. And then——?