particularly with
regard to their mercenary spoliation of the nation's defence forces, and
their insane pertinacity in clinging to the policy of "cheapness," which
killed both the manufacturing and the agricultural industries of the
country, by allowing other properly protected nations to oust our
producers from all foreign markets, and to swamp our home markets with
their surplus stocks. Down to the minutest detail, the same causes and
actions had produced the same results a century earlier in the
Netherlands; and even as, first, King William of Prussia, and then
revolutionary France, had devastated the Netherlands, so had the
Kaiser's legions overrun England. It was not for lack of warning that
our politicians had blindly followed so fatal a lead. "The Destroyers"
were still being warned most urgently at the very time of the invasion
by public speakers, and in such lucid works as Ellis Barker's _The Rise
and Decline of the Netherlands_.

In spite of the emphatically non-party character of _The Citizens'_
campaign, John Crondall kept in close touch throughout with all his
political friends, and very many members of Parliament were among our
leading workers. My chief's idea was that, when the elections drew near,
we should cease to map out our movements in accordance with those of the
Canadian preachers, and allow them to be guided by the exigencies of the
electoral campaign; bringing all our influence to bear wherever we saw
weakness in the cause of patriotism and reform.

Already we had arrangements made for leading members of _The Citizens_
to address meetings throughout the elections at a good many centres.
But, before the electioneering had gone far, it became evident that more
had already been accomplished than we supposed. Candidates who came
before their constituents with any kind of party programme were either
angrily howled down or contemptuously ignored. Old supporters of "The
Destroyers," who ventured upon temporizing tactics, were peremptorily
faced with demands for straight-out declarations of policy upon the
single issue of patriotic reform and duty to the State. With a single
exception, the actual members of the Cabinet in "The Destroyers'"
Administration refrained from any attempt to secure reelection.

Such an electoral campaign had never before been known in England.
Candidates who, even inadvertently, used such words as "Conservative,"
"Radical," or "Liberal," were hissed into silence. Even the wor