Here we have a lesson to learn from Germany, for German statesmen, strangely enough, have taken immense trouble to make their policy a democratic one.  The whole German nation is behind them because for years and years they have taught the nation through the schools, the universities, and the press, their own reading of history and their own idea of what true civilisation is.  They have adapted their teaching to the fundamental characteristics and to the history of the German people.  They have taken pains to ally the interests alike of capital and labour to their policy, and to fuse the whole nation by a uniform national education and by a series of paternal social reforms imposed from above.  The real strength and danger of Germany is not what her statesmen or soldiers do, but what Germans themselves believe.  We are fighting not an army but a false idea; and nothing will defeat a false idea but the knowledge of the truth.

When this war is over, whatever its outcome may be, we must try to introduce a new era into the history of the world.  But our fathers and our fathers’ fathers have tried to do this same thing, and we shall not succeed if we go about the work in a spirit of self-sufficiency and hasty pride.  Only knowledge of the truth will enable us to succeed.  Knowledge of the truth is not an easy thing; it is a question of laborious thought, mental discipline, the humility which is content to learn and the moral courage which can face the truth when it is learnt.  How are we to gain these things?

First of all, by schools, universities, classes—­all the machinery of our national and private education.

Then, by the same means as popular government employs in other matters—­by discussion, by debates in Parliament, by criticism of the Government.  Now, these means are not employed at present partly because it is feared that criticism of the Government in matters of foreign policy will weaken its hands in dealing with foreign nations.  This is a just fear if criticism merely springs from the critics’ personal likings or prejudices, but no such evil effects need be feared if the criticism springs from deep thought, from knowledge of the facts and from the patience and wisdom which thought and knowledge bring.  But partly also effective discussion of foreign politics does not exist because we are more interested in home politics.  We really have, if we cared to use it, as much democratic control over the Foreign Office under our constitution as over any Government Department, for the Foreign Office, like every other Department, is under the control of a member of Parliament, elected by the people.  But we are more interested in social reform, in labour legislation, and in constitutional reform than in foreign politics; and so it is on questions of home policy that we make and unmake Governments, and when we discuss whether a Conservative or a Liberal Government ought to be in power, we never think what