“You have killed me,” says Socrates, “because you thought to escape from giving an account of your lives.  But you will be disappointed.  There are others to convict you, accusers whom I held back when you knew it not, they will be harsher inasmuch as they are younger, and you will wince the more.”

One day the full truth of this scandalous story will be told, and the historian will then pronounce a judgment which will leave an indelible stain on the reputation of some who with a guilty conscience now sun themselves in the prosperity of public approval.  Their children will not read that judgment without bitter shame.

I condemn in this matter not only the man who gave the order for calumny and slander to set to work but, first, the friends of Lord Haldane who kept silence, and, second, the democracy of these islands which allowed itself to be deceived and exploited by the lowest kind of newspapers.

Why was Sir Edward Grey silent?  He was living in Lord Haldane’s house at the time, and, agonizing over the abhorrent prospect of European slaughter and striving to the point of a nervous collapse to avert this calamity, was devotedly served and strengthened by his host.  Why was he silent?

Why was Mr. Asquith silent?  He knew that Lord Haldane had delivered the War Office from chaos and had given to this country for the first time in its history a coherent and brilliantly efficient weapon for this very purpose of a war with Germany.  He spoke when it was too late.  Why did he not speak when the hounds were in full cry?

And why were Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Winston Churchill silent?  Could they not have told the nation that they had grudged Lord Haldane his Army estimates, and that they had even suggested another and less expensive scheme of national defence—­a scheme that was actually examined by the War Office experts and condemned?

Let Mr. Lloyd George look back.  If he had had his way with the War Office could Germany have been stopped from reaching Paris and seizing the Channel ports?  Moreover, if he had had his way, could he himself have hoped to escape hanging on a lamp-post?  Is it not true to say that in saving France from an overwhelming and almost immediate destruction the British Expeditionary Force also saved his neck, the neck of Mr. Winston Churchill, and the necks of all the Cabinet?  But if this is so, and his own conscience shall be the judge, how is it that he said no word to the nation which might have saved Lord Haldane from martyrdom?

The nation, I think, does not know what it loses in allowing its judgment to be stampeded by unconscionable journalism.  Lord Haldane is no political dilettante.  Few men in modern times have brought to politics a mind so trained in right thinking, or a spirit so full of that impressive quality, as Morley calls it, the presentiment of the eve:  “a feeling of the difficulties and interests that will engage and