To them war is no frightful necessity imposed upon a free and peaceful people, but a providential opportunity for taking occasion by the hand; the voice is the voice of Prussia, but the hands are English hands.
Our Prussians have always been in evidence, but, while the government of the empire was trusted to their friends, they were content to be quietly active. It is now nearly ten years since a Liberal Government came into power, and with the advent of Radical legislation our Prussians—they call them Tories over here—became active.
When taxation threatened their superfluous wealth, they called heaven and earth to witness that such an outrage had no sanction. When the House of Lords, long the supreme force of obstruction, was threatened they grew frantic, and at many a well-spread board declared themselves ready to dine—I mean die—in the last ditch before submitting to the indignity of democratic government.
When Home Rule was on the tapis they declared for revolution and civil war, and it needed Armageddon to burst the bladder of Sir Edward Carson's threats. In justice be it said that when the tocsin sounded the Tories responded to the nation's need, and forgot for a time their ineffective selves.
But as soon as the gravity of the task was revealed they decided that the authorities were useless without their judgment in aid. Cabal succeeded criticism, plots of exquisite silliness were hatched, matched, and dispatched. Then came the call for more soldiers, and our Prussians turned Conscriptionists.
The suggestion that conscription of men should be associated with conscription of wealth was dismissed as an impertinence, it sufficed if all that others possess were sacrificed for the State. Our Prussians talked incessantly of men and duty, but where finance was concerned they were content to warn the worker not to squander his extra wages earned by unremitting labour during a week seven days long. They saw with clear vision the iniquity of depriving the capitalist of half the wealth he is amassing as a result of the bloodiest war in history, and have protested almost in unison against the decree. They forgot with amazing ease that conscription is the force that has set the Prussian Jack-boot above all law human and divine; they clamoured for it here, doubtless with an eye upon the possibilities of coercing in days to come a proletariat of toilers forced to live under military law in time of peace. Disguised as patriots they thundered from a hundred platforms, they thumped a thousand tubs, while their hirelings in the Press wrote stodgily in admiration and support, pointing out that certain hard-jawed, soulless politicians would alone avail to save England from itself. As though England would endure to-day the undiluted political opinions of a Carson, a Milner, a Halsbury, or a Walter Long. Excellent men, no doubt, but never in their lives less than half a century behind the times.
Politicians and papers were aided by the truth that even the voluntary system has its flaws and hardships, its inequalities and petty tyrannies, and the Prussian remedy for the whip of voluntary service is the scorpion of conscription.
Those who do not agree with our Prussians are traitors to the height, although if our Prussians are patriots Dr. Johnson's definition of patriotism becomes dangerously true.
The question of peace discussion has been the latest consideration of these gentry. Personally I have no use for peace until we have won our victory or suffered our defeat. I believe we shall win, and that our first duties as victors will be to take whatever steps are needed to give peace permanence.