When, one day, Englishmen are not allowed to walk the pavements of their cities, and their women are for the pleasure of the invaders, and the offices of the Tiny England newspapers are incinerated by a furious mob; when foreign military officers proclaim martial law from the Royal Exchange steps, and when some billions of pounds have to be raised by taxation—­by taxation of the “toiling millions” as well as others—­to pay the invaders out, and the British Empire consists of England—­less Dover, required for a foreign strategic tunnel—­and the Channel Islands—­then the ghosts of certain politicians and publicists will probably call a meeting for the discussion of the Fourth Dimension.—­Leading Article, Daily Express, 8/7/12.

And not merely shall our women fill the harems of the German pashas, and Englishmen not be allowed to walk upon the pavement (it would be the German way of solving the traffic problem—­near the Bank), but a “well-known Diplomat” in another paper tells us what else will happen.

If England be vanquished it means the end of all things as far as she is concerned, and will ring in a new and somewhat terrible era.  Bankrupt, shorn of all power, deserted, as must clearly follow, as a commercial state, and groaning under a huge indemnity that she cannot pay and is not intended to be able to pay, what will be the melancholy end of this great country and her teeming population of forty-five millions?

...  Her shipping trade will be transferred as far as possible from the English to the German flag.  Her banking will be lost, as London will no longer be the centre of commerce, and efforts will be made to enable Berlin to take London’s place.  Her manufactures will gradually desert her.  Failing to obtain payments in due time, estates will be sequestered and become the property of wealthy Germans.  The indemnity to be demanded is said to be one thousand millions sterling.

The immediate result of defeat would mean, of course, that insolvency would take place in a very large number of commercial businesses, and others would speedily follow.  Those who cannot get away will starve unless large relief funds are forthcoming from, say, Canada and the United States, for this country, bereft of its manufactures, will not be able to sustain a population of more than a very few millions.—­From an Article by “A Well-known Diplomatist” in The Throne, June 12, 1912.

These are but samples; and this sort of thing is going on in England and Germany alike.  And when one protests that it is wicked rubbish born of funk and ignorance, that whatever happens in war this does not happen, and that it is based on false economics and grows into utterly false conceptions of international relationship, one is shouted down as an anti-armament man and an enemy of his country.