The writer’s idea of how to establish and advance the Christian faith is to keep out of war, and the best method of doing this is for the electorate to choose men to govern who are highly gifted with diplomatic genius.  Nearly all wars are brought about through incompetent negotiators, and the wastage of life and property in carrying on a war is certainly to be attributed to men who are at the head of affairs being mere politicians, without any faculty whatever for carrying out great undertakings.  They are simply mischievous shadows, and merely excel as intriguers in putting good men out of office and themselves in.  It is the selection of men for the posts they are eminently suited to fill that counts in any department of life, but it is more manifestly important in affairs of Government.  For instance, nothing but disaster can follow if a man is made Chancellor of the Exchequer who has no instinct for national finance, and the same thing applies to a Foreign Secretary who has no knowledge of or natural instinct for international diplomacy.  At the same time, an adroit commercial expert may be utterly useless in dealing with matters of State that are affected by trade.  The two positions are wide apart, and are a business in themselves.  The writer’s view is that to fill any department of State satisfactorily the head should have both political and commercial training, combined with wholesome instinct.  I don’t say that trade is altogether affected by the kind of Government that is in power, but bad trade and bad government combined make a terrific burden for any nation to carry.

Service men, in the main, measure and think always from a military or naval point of view.  Some of them have quite a genius for organizing in matters concerning their different professions.  Take the late Lord Kitchener.  In Army matters he was unequalled as an organizer but abominably traduced.  Then there is Lord Fisher, who easily heads everybody connected with the Navy, as a great Admiral who can never be deprived of the merit of being the creator of our modern fleet.  He combines with a matchless genius for control a fine organizing brain.  The politician, with his amateurish antics, deprived the British Empire of the services of an outstanding figure that would have saved us many lives and many ships, without taking into account the vast quantity of merchandise and foodstuffs that have perished.  It is not by creating confusion that the best interest of the nation is served, either in peace-time or during war.  Those robust rhetoricians who massacre level-headed government and substitute a system of make-shift experiments during a great national crisis do a wicked public disservice.  I have no time to deal with these superior persons in detail, but I cannot keep my thoughts from the terrible bitterness and anguish their haphazard experiments may have caused.  The destroying force will eat into the very entrails of our national life if some powerful resolute personality does not arise