hat is to say, that we were not fighting an enemy who could
be shouted down or made ashamed by abusive epithets, but that we were
opposing a spirit whose anger and temper were entirely different from
our own, and therefore a spirit which must be understood if we were to
conquer it. It was not merely the armies of Germany which must be
defeated, it was the soul of Germany which had to be converted. He saw
this clearly: he never ceased to work to that end; but he failed to take
the nation into his confidence and the public never understood what he
was after. A fanatic would have left the nation in no doubt of his
purpose.

Every now and then he has half let the nation see what was in his mind.
For example, he has taken those illuminating, those surely inspired,
words of Edith Cavell as the text for more than one address--_Patriotism
is not enough_. But beautiful and convincing as these addresses have
been, their spirit has always had the wistful and _piano_ tones of
philosophy, never the consuming fervour of fanaticism. He knows, as few
other men know, that without a League of Nations the future of
civilization is in peril, even the future of the white races; but he has
never made the world feel genuine alarm for this danger or genuine
enthusiasm for the sole means that can avert it. He has not preached
the League of Nations as a way of salvation; he has only recommended it
as a legal tribunal.

It is apparently difficult for a politician, however statesmanlike his
qualities, to realize that politics cannot be even divorced from
morality, much less to comprehend that morality is the very sinew of
politics, being in truth nothing more than the conscience of a nation
striving to express itself in State action. Because of this politics
become degraded and sink to the lowest levels of a mere factional
manoeuvring for place. They engage the attention of the attorney, and
earn nothing but the contempt of the wise. They become like the
perversions of art in the hands of those who assert that art has nothing
to do with morals; they interest only a handful of experts.

But a man like Lord Robert Cecil does surely apprehend that the essence
of politics is morality and, therefore, his unwillingness to use moral
weapons in the political arena is hard to understand. He debates where
he should appeal; he criticizes where he should denounce; and he accepts
a compromise where he should lead a revolt. He is also altogether too
civil fo