stories.  If the experts attempt any pedantic interference, we will shoot the experts.  I know that in this matter I speak for so sufficient a number of people that it will be quite useless and hopelessly dangerous and foolish for any expert-instructed minority to remain “tame.”  They will get shot, and their houses will be burned according to the established German rules and methods on our account, so they may just as well turn out in the first place, and get some shooting as a consolation in advance for their inevitable troubles.  And if the raiders, cut off by the sea from their supports, ill-equipped as they will certainly be, and against odds, are so badly advised as to try terror-striking reprisals on the Belgian pattern, we irregulars will, of course, massacre every German straggler we can put a gun to.  Naturally.  Such a procedure may be sanguinary, but it is just the common sense of the situation.  We shall hang the officers and shoot the men.  A German raid to England will in fact not be fought—­it will be lynched.  War is war, and reprisals and striking terror are games that two can play at.  This is the latent temper of the British countryside, and the sooner the authorities take it in hand and regularize it the better will be the outlook in the remote event of that hypothetical raid getting home to us.  Levity is a national characteristic, but submissiveness is not.  Under sufficient provocation the English are capable of very dangerous bad temper, and the expert is dreaming who thinks of a German expedition moving through an apathetic Essex, for example, resisted only by the official forces trained and in training.

And whatever one may think of the possibility of raids, I venture to suggest that the time has come when the present exclusive specialization of our combatant energy upon the production of regulation armies should cease.  The gathering of these will go on anyhow; there are unlimited men ready for intelligent direction.  Now that the shortage of supplies and accommodation has been remedied the enlistment sluices need only be opened again.  The rank and file of this country is its strength; there is no need, and there never has been any need, for press hysterics about recruiting.  But there is wanted a far more vigorous stimulation of the manufacture of material—­if only experts and rich people would turn their minds to that.  It is the trading and manufacturing class that needs goading at the present time.  It is very satisfactory to send troops to France, but in France there are still great numbers of able-bodied, trained Frenchmen not fully equipped.  It is our national duty and privilege to be the storehouse and arsenal of the Allies.  Our factories for clothing and material of all sorts should be working day and night.  There is the point to which enthusiasm should be turned.  It is just as heroic and just as useful to the country to kill yourself making belts and boots as it is to die in a trench.  But our