lendid speech. For an Englishman
never compares speeches either with facts or with previous speeches:
to him a speech is art for art's sake, the disciples of our favoured
politicians being really, if they only knew it, disciples of
Whistler. Also, and equally important, we have to bear in mind that
the English genius does not, like the German, lie in disciplined
idealism. The Englishman is an Anarchist and a grumbler: he has no
such word as Fatherland, and the idea which he supposes corresponds
to it is nothing but the swing of a roaring chorus to a patriotic
song. Also he is a muddler and a slacker, because tense and
continuous work means thought; and he is lazy and fat in the head.
But as long as he is himself, and grumbles, it does not matter. Given
a furious Opposition screaming for the disgrace of tyrannical and
corrupt ministers, and a press on the very verge of inviting Napoleon
to enter London in triumph and deliver a groaning land from the
intolerable burden of its native rulers' incapacity and rapacity and
obsolescence, and the departments will work as well as the enemy's
departments (perhaps better), and the government will have to keep
its wits at full pressure. But once let England try what she is
trying now: that is, to combine the devoted silence and obedience of
the German system with the slack and muddle of Coodle and Doodle, and
we are lost. Unless you keep up as hot a fire from your ink-bottle on
the Government as the soldier keeps up from the trenches you are
betraying that soldier. Of course they will call you a pro-German.
What of that? They call ME a pro-German. We also must stand fire. As
Peer Gynt said of hell, if the torture is only moral, it cannot be so
very bad.

I grieve to say that some fool has stolen my title, and issued a
two page pamphlet called Uncommon Sense about the War. So I shall
have to call mine More Common Sense About the War. It is not yet in
type: I haven't yet quite settled its destination. Any chance of
seeing you both if we drive over from Ayot to Beaconsfield some
Sunday or other afternoon.

Yours ever,

G.B.S.

Wells too was rejoicing over his recovery--

DEAR OLD G.K.C.,

I'm so delighted to get a letter from you again. As soon as I can I
will come to Beaconsfield and see you. I'm absurdly busy in bringing
together the Rulers of the country and the