cast into the scale of a free Europe the ancient sword of Ireland.*

[* _The Uses of Diversity_.]

Our crimes were in the past, not the present. The first had been when
we gave aid to Prussia against Austria, Austria which was "not a
nation" but "a kind of Empire, a Holy Roman Empire that never came,"
which "still retained something of the old Catholic comfort for the
soul." We had helped to put Prussia instead of Austria at the head of
the Germanies--Prussia which in the person of Frederick the Great
"hated everything German and everything good." Francophile as
Chesterton was, he yet had a certain tenderness for those old
Germanies which "preserved the good things that go with small
interests and strict boundaries, music, etiquette, a dreamy
philosophy and so on."

Our next crimes had been in calling Prussia to our aid against
Napoleon and in failing to assist Denmark against her. And by far our
worst had been the using of Prussian mercenaries with their ghastly
tradition of cruelty in Ireland in the '98.

There is in this little book one drawback from the historian's point
of view: its view of the past is so oddly selective. Doubtless it is
lawful to examine your own nation's conscience as you do your
own--and not your neighbour's. Yet history should be rather an
examination of facts than an examination of conscience. And
historically Richelieu's policies had had quite something to say in
the creation of Prussia; the conscript armies of the French
Revolution had first made Europe into an armed camp. It was an undue
simplification to insist exclusively on The Crimes of England.

But even while he did so Chesterton rejoiced that now at long last
England was on the right side, on the side of Europe and of sanity.
The _New Witness_ group had always seen the issue as their countrymen
were now suddenly beginning to see it. They had no sympathy with the
"liberal" thinking, made in Germany, that had in the name of biblical
and historical criticism been undermining the bases of Christianity.
Their love of logic and of clarity had made German philosophy
intolerable to them--it was wind, and it was fog. Finally their love
of France had always made them conceive of Europe as centering in
that country. For them there was one profound satisfaction even amid
the horrors of war: that the issues were so clear.

But were they as clear to the whole world? If not they must be made
so.

There were two main problems to be overco