nto a
Serbonian bog whence no escape is possible. The leaders of Great
Britain are so permeated with the duties, the rights, the hopes and
the strivings of parliamentary parties, that they involuntarily think
in terms of home politics and have no chord in their being responsive
to the emotions that sway the German soul and nerve the German arm.

To the average mind it is clear that the terms on which peace might be
negotiated, if the end of the war were also to be the end of the
struggle, might differ considerably from those on which a statesman
would properly insist, were he convinced that the sheathing of the
sword marked but the opening of a new phase of the duel. And it is
this alternative which it behoves us to lay at the foundation of our
peace treaty, if it should rest with the Allies to impose their terms.
The problem, therefore, which a Government that governs has to tackle,
is twofold: the conclusion of such a peace as will confer on the
Entente States, individually and collectively, all possible
advantages, not for contemplating such a tranquil state of things as
the ministerial conception postulates, but for the prosecution of the
struggle with the greatest chances of success, and for the
reconstruction of the social fabric at home with a view to harmonizing
it with the new requirements, and, in particular, with the needs
created by the constant state of economic, financial, diplomatic and
journalistic warfare in which we shall be engaged. The social ordering
of Great Britain must be not merely modified but remodelled and
rebuilt from the groundwork to the coping-stone. One of the first
needs of the nation is the education, physical and spiritual, of the
new generation. Patriotic sentiment must be engrafted on the receptive
soul of the child, and its range of sympathy widened and deepened. The
duty of self-abnegation for the welfare of the community must be
inculcated, together with new conceptions of personal dignity and
worth. To the domestic sentiment in those cramped and distorted forms
in which it still survives in Britain, where we cling tenaciously to
so many institutions devoid of life and utility, a less commanding
part must be assigned in the future than heretofore. Above all, it
behoves us to encourage the scientific spirit with its correlates,
patient thought and study, as opposed to the arrogant amateurism
which, without rudimentary qualifications, claims to have a voice in
the solution of ever