On December 9, at the Queen’s Hall, the Prime Minister avoided the subject.  But from now on, the debauchery of thought and speech progressed hour by hour.  The grossest spectacle was provided by Sir Eric Geddes in the Guildhall at Cambridge.  An earlier speech in which, in a moment of injudicious candor, he had cast doubts on the possibility of extracting from Germany the whole cost of the war had been the object of serious suspicion, and he had therefore a reputation to regain.  “We will get out of her all you can squeeze out of a lemon and a bit more,” the penitent shouted, “I will squeeze her until you can hear the pips squeak”; his policy was to take every bit of property belonging to Germans in neutral and Allied countries, and all her gold and silver and her jewels, and the contents of her picture-galleries and libraries, to sell the proceeds for the Allies’ benefit.  “I would strip Germany,” he cried, “as she has stripped Belgium.”

By December 11 the Prime Minister had capitulated.  His Final Manifesto of Six Points issued on that day to the electorate furnishes a melancholy comparison with his program of three weeks earlier.  I quote it in full: 

“1.  Trial of the Kaiser. 2.  Punishment of those responsible for atrocities. 3.  Fullest Indemnities from Germany. 4.  Britain for the British, socially and industrially. 5.  Rehabilitation of those broken in the war. 6.  A happier country for all.”

Here is food for the cynic.  To this concoction of greed and sentiment, prejudice and deception, three weeks of the platform had reduced the powerful governors of England, who but a little while before had spoken not ignobly of Disarmament and a League of Nations and of a just and lasting peace which should establish the foundations of a new Europe.

On the same evening the Prime Minister at Bristol withdrew in effect his previous reservations and laid down four principles to govern his Indemnity Policy, of which the chief were:  First, we have an absolute right to demand the whole cost of the war; second, we propose to demand the whole cost of the war; and third, a Committee appointed by direction of the Cabinet believe that it can be done.[100] Four days later he went to the polls.

The Prime Minister never said that he himself believed that Germany could pay the whole cost of the war.  But the program became in the mouths of his supporters on the hustings a great deal more than concrete.  The ordinary voter was led to believe that Germany could certainly be made to pay the greater part, if not the whole cost of the war.  Those whose practical and selfish fears for the future the expenses of the war had aroused, and those whose emotions its horrors had disordered, were both provided for.  A vote for a Coalition candidate meant the Crucifixion of Anti-Christ and the assumption by Germany of the British National Debt.