ly comic. To do
them justice, they do not now entertain the idea, though they have
dallied with it in the past.

No harm can be done, I think, by preaching to the English people the
necessity for organization and discipline. We shall still be ourselves,
and there is no danger that we shall overdo discipline or make
organization a thing to be worshipped for its own sake. The danger is
all the other way. We have learnt much from the war, and the work that
we shall have to do when it ends is almost more important than the terms
of peace, or concessions made this way and that. If the treacherous
assault of the Germans on the liberties and peace of Europe is rewarded
by any solid gain to the German Empire, then history may forgive them,
but this people of the British Empire will not forgive them. Nothing
will be as it was before; and our cause, which will not be lost in the
war, will still have to be won in the so-called peace. I know that some
say, 'Let us have war when we are at war, and peace when we are at
peace'. It sounds plausible and magnanimous, but it is Utopian. You must
reckon with your own people. They know that when we last had peace, the
sunshine of that peace was used by the Germans to hatch the spawn of
malice and treason. If the Germans are defeated in the war, we shall, I
suppose, forgive them, for the very English reason that it is a bore not
to forgive your enemies. But if they escape without decisive defeat in
battle, their harder trial is yet to come.

In some ways we are stronger than we have been in all our long history.
We have found ourselves, and we have found our friends. Our dead have
taught the children of to-day more and better than any living teachers
can teach them. No one in this country will ever forget how the people
of the Dominions, at the first note of war, sprang to arms like one man.
We must not thank or praise them; like the Navy, they regard our thanks
and praise as something of an impertinence. They are not fighting, they
say, for us. But that is how we discovered them. They are doing much
better than fighting for us, they are fighting with us, because, without
a word of explanation or appeal, their ideas and ours are the same. We
never have discussed with them, and we never shall discuss, what is
decent and clean and honourable in human behaviour. A philosopher who
is interested in this question can find plenty of intellectual exercise
by discussing it with the Germans, Where an