"A new metal has come into the London crowd out of the crucible of these last few days. The froth and fume of flag-wagging have evaporated; so, too, have lifted bone-quaking mists of dread and suspense. Exultation and depression are alike unhealthy. It is good that we are now free from them.
"The faces in the street are the barometers of the souls that men hide. It does one's heart good to walk London and to behold that very notable rise--apparent to every one and swift in its example--of the mercury of the people. The great war took all our comprehensions unawares. Although it has boded for years, it walked at last like an unbelievable spectre into a warm and lighted room. What wonder that we were shaken? What wonder at a creeping ague of the spirit in front of the unknown?
"The dizziness has gone. The trial before us, black as it is, is not so black as our anticipation of it. We have already surprised ourselves no less than we have confounded our enemies by our rally and our readiness. The financial situation is saved, the banks re-open, the food supplies are safeguarded, and prices controlled.
"A tremendous accession of calmness and reliance has come to the nation by the appointment of Lord Kitchener to the War Office. The news that the Army is in his hands, a rock of a man, has swept through London like a vivifying breeze.
"London is swinging back to as much of its normal life as possible. She has found herself. She is bravely being the usual London--the great city serene."
Far more profitable, obviously, than hunting war excitement was examination of the causes which accounted for its absence, and to that I forthwith devoted myself. In the first place, there was the navy, "England's All in All." By a fortuitous circumstance, for which, with all his faults, the Empire must render imperishable gratitude to its young half-American First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, the Fleet was instantly at its "war stations," fully mobilized, and in a state of battle-readiness and general efficiency unparalleled in British history. War maneuvers on an unapproached scale had been in progress for the preceding fortnight or three weeks. Only the merest word of command was wanting to convert the Grand Fleet into the battering-ram and shield, to constitute which in the hour of emergency it had been created. "Ringed by her leaden seas," which were held, moreover, by a "supreme" armada, there seemed every justification for equanimity, for the United Kingdom has no frontiers which an invading army can violate as long as Britannia rules the waves.
The domestic political situation, more menacingly turbulent than at any time within the memory of living Englishmen, had been resolved with miraculous rapidity and completeness. "Revolution" in Ulster, on which the Germans had so fondly banked, vanished as effectually as if it had never raised its head. "We will ourselves defend the coasts of Ireland," declared John Redmond in the House of Commons in a speech which will never die, "and I say to the Government that they may to-morrow withdraw every one of their troops from Ireland." Mrs. Pankhurst, freshly released from a periodical hunger-striking sojourn in Brixton jail, announced that the suffragettes had stacked arms and now knew only womankind's duty to England. That sent another Berlin dream careening into oblivion. "His Majesty's Loyal Opposition" proclaimed in Parliament through the mouth of the Conservative leader, Bonar Law, that the Government's political opponents were prepared to accord it "unhesitating support." In the Government itself the "Potsdam Party," as that relentless iconoclast, Leo Maxse, long termed the coterie which was for peace with Germany at almost any price, was either weeded out or suppressed. Lord Morley, the Lord President of the Council; "Honest John" Burns, still true to convictions, President of the Local Government Board, and Charles P. Trevelyan, Parliamentary Secretary of the Board of Education, unobtrusively retired from Mr. Asquith's official family in consequence of their inability to sanction the war. They have played their parts meantime with honorable consistency--by maintaining an hermetical silence on questions of the war. And finally, though primarily in popular judgment, Lord Haldane, the graduate of Göttingen, the translator of Schopenhauer and the admirer of German Geist, was driven by scandalized public opinion from the War Office, whither he had just come as an "assistant" to the Prime Minister, whose cabinet portfolio was the Secretaryship for War. Most of England sighed with thankful relief when the able Scotch lawyer and philosopher whom contemporary history accuses of responsibility for Britain's military unpreparedness, beat an ignominious retreat back to his regular post, the wool-sack, which, as Lord Chancellor, he by general consent conspicuously adorned. The country's relief became enthusiastic assurance when the lawyer, Asquith, himself retired from the War Office, to make way for the soldier, Kitchener, who was recalled by telegram the day before from Dover, just as he was about to board ship for Cairo, to resume his duties as the ruler of Egypt. With the "Potsdam Party" banished or made harmless, the Cabinet was now regarded as satisfactorily purged. The public heard with boundless gratification that the "strong men" of the Government--Grey, Lloyd-George and Churchill--had been uncompromisingly for war from the start as the only recourse compatible with British honor, to say nothing of the elementary dictates of self-preservation. It was at length possible for Mr. Asquith to assure the country that he presided over an administration of whose unity of view and determination there was no shadow of a doubt--a Government which was resolved, as Sir Edward Grey's great speech in the House of Commons on August 3 set forth, to accomplish three cardinal purposes:
1. To protect the defenseless French coast against attack by the German navy;
- To defend the integrity of Belgium; and
3. To put forth all Britain's strength and not run away from the obligations of honor and interest.