to fight it.”  And the public, bored by the diplomatists, said:  “Now you’re talking!” We did not stop to ask our consciences whether the Prussian assumption that the dominion of the civilized earth belongs to German culture is really any more bumptious than the English assumption that the dominion of the sea belongs to British commerce.  And in our island security we were as little able as ever to realize the terrible military danger of Germany’s geographical position between France and England on her west flank and Russia on her east:  all three leagued for her destruction; and how unreasonable it was to ask Germany to lose the fraction of a second (much less Sir Maurice de Runsen’s naive “a few days’ delay”) in dashing at her Western foe when she could obtain no pledge as to Western intentions.  “We are now in a state of necessity; and Necessity knows no law,” said the Imperial Chancellor in the Reichstag.  “It is a matter of life and death to us,” said the German Minister for Foreign Affairs to our Ambassador in Berlin, who had suddenly developed an extraordinary sense of the sacredness of the Treaty of London, dated 1839, and still, as it happened, inviolate among the torn fragments of many subsequent and similar “scraps of paper.”  Our Ambassador seems to have been of Sir Maurice’s opinion that there could be no such tearing hurry.  The Germans could enter France through the line of forts between Verdun and Toul if they were really too flustered to wait a few days on the chance of Sir Edward Grey’s persuasive conversation and charming character softening Russia and bringing Austria to conviction of sin.  Thereupon the Imperial Chancellor, not being quite an angel, asked whether we had counted the cost of crossing the path of an Empire fighting for its life (for these Militarist statesmen do really believe that nations can be killed by cannon shot).  That was a threat; and as we cared nothing about Germany’s peril, and wouldn’t stand being threatened any more by a Power of which we now had the inside grip, the fat remained in the fire, blazing more fiercely than ever.  There was only one end possible to such a clash of high tempers, national egotisms, and reciprocal ignorances.

Delicate Position of Mr. Asquith.

It seemed a splendid chance for the Government to place itself at the head of the nation.  But no British Government within my recollection has ever understood the nation.  Mr. Asquith, true to the Gladstonian tradition (hardly just to Gladstone, by the way) that a Liberal Prime Minister should know nothing concerning foreign politics and care less, and calmly insensible to the real nature of the popular explosion, fell back on 1839, picking up the obvious barrister’s point about the violation of the neutrality of Belgium, and tried the equally obvious barrister’s claptrap about “an infamous proposal” on the jury.  He assured us that nobody could have done more for peace than Sir Edward Grey, though the rush to smash the Kaiser was the most popular thing Sir Edward had ever done.