capitals teem with books on the question, people in this country really
imagine that secret societies are things of the past--articles to this
effect appeared quite recently in two leading London newspapers--whilst
practically nothing of any value has been written about them in our
language during the last hundred years. Hence ideas that are
commonplaces on the Continent here appear sensational and extravagant.
The mind of the Englishman does not readily accept anything he cannot
see or even sometimes anything he can see which is unprecedented in his
experience, so that like the West American farmer, confronted for the
first time by the sight of a giraffe, his impulse is to cry out angrily:
"I don't believe it!"

But whilst making all allowance for honest ignorance and incredulity, it
is impossible not to recognize a certain method in the manner in which
the cry of "obsession" or "bogey" is raised. For it will be noticed that
people who specialize on other subjects are not described as "obsessed."
We did not hear, for example, that the late Professor Einstein had
Relativity "on the brain" because he wrote and lectured exclusively on
this question, nor do we hear it suggested that Mr. Howard Carter is
obsessed with the idea of Tutankhamen and that it would be well if he
were to set out for the South Pole by way of a change. Again, all those
who warn the world concerning eventualities they conceive to be a danger
are not accused of creating bogeys. Thus although Lord Roberts was
denounced as a scaremonger for urging the country to prepare for
defence against a design openly avowed by Germany both in speech and
print, and in 1921 the Duke of Northumberland was declared the victim of
a delusion for believing in the existence of a plot against the British
Empire which had been proclaimed in a thousand revolutionary harangues
and pamphlets. People who, without bothering to produce a shred of
documentary evidence, had sounded the alarm on the menace of "French
Imperialism" and asserted that our former Allies were engaged in
building a vast fleet of aeroplanes in order to attack our coasts. They
were not held to be either scaremongers or insane. On the contrary,
although some of these same people were proved by events to have been
completely wrong in their prognostications at the beginning of the Great
War, they are still regarded as oracles and sometimes even described as
"thinking for half Europe."

Another instance of this