The generation that saw the liberalism on which it had been reared stricken to the ground by the annihilating onrush of war still hoped that, with the halting approach of peace, liberalism might raise its head again. Among the faithful are numbered the ardent and generous spirits of every generation; and the faith is imperishable even though from time to time it lack a prophet or a leader. It is inspired by compassion for all who are any way afflicted in mind, body or estate and it exists to relieve affliction by the gift of freedom. Liberty to sleep and wake and work and love, secure from the oppression of a despotic ruler or a strong neighbour; liberty to win the best from life, unhampered by hunger or thirst, by cold or disease, by ignorance or fear; liberty to enjoy the fruits of labour and to engage in the pursuit of happiness; liberty for a man to do whatsoever he wishes, provided that he does not infringe the liberty of his neighbour: all this is included in the faith of liberalism, which embraces also the liberty of the smaller aggregates, which we call classes, and of the larger aggregates, which we call nations, to mould their own destinies and to pursue, each in its own way, its own ideal of happiness. It is a militant faith, for, when compassion slumbers, the need for liberty and the faith in liberty are dead; it is kept ever alert and brightly armoured by the just young, who cannot tolerate that millions of their fellow creatures should begin life handicapped, and by the merciful, who believe that active or passive cruelty is the root of all evil and the mark of original sin. What a man becomes in later life is conditioned by the scars which the struggle for existence leaves upon him; for the man who was not a liberal in youth, there may be pity, but there can be no hope. The men who risked anything or everything in the war attached various labels to their political beliefs, but the act of sacrifice made liberals of them.
After the crisis of December, 1916, fewer tears were shed for fallen liberal idols than for unpedestalled liberal ministers, and compassion was too much needed at home to be spared for export; now, as then, less righteous indignation is engendered by the collapse of liberalism than by the defection of prominent liberals. Captain Guest and Mr. Shortt, Sir Alfred Mond and Mr. Churchill, Dr. Addison and Mr. Macpherson, Sir Hamar Greenwood and Mr. Harmsworth, Sir Gordon Hewart and Mr. Montagu are felt by "wee free" liberals to have sold their master; a year ago,[37] some of them were publicly acclaimed as "rats" and denied a hearing. Those who remained loyal to Mr. Asquith dropped gently out of political prominence until the general election of 1918 dropped them less gently out of public life. A British political faith has never been so completely and tidily demolished as was British liberalism, with its organisation and its army, at the hands of a Welsh solicitor, an Irish newspaper proprietor, a Canadian financier and their satellites, aided by the inexorable logic of events.
The funeral of liberalism was carried out with more despatch than solemnity. On the night of Mr. Asquith's resignation the politicians separated at once into those who had surrendered office and those who hoped to fill the vacant places. Le roy est mort; vive le roy! Though Irish, English and Scotch were being killed on a dozen fronts, no time was being wasted at home; as in the political crisis after Neuve Chapelle, more than one soldier-politician had returned to London in full readiness to lay aside his sword in exchange for a portfolio; and before Mr. Bonar Law had visited the king, a "new gang" leader might have been overheard enquiring of an "old gang" minister how much he had got out of the "pool" of ministerial salaries. The mission to America offered to its members a welcome holiday from English politics.
In those days any holiday from London would have been acceptable. Most of those who passed their time in government offices were overworked; almost all of them ex hypothesi were in one way or another unfit; all were stale. Their blood unfired by hand-to-hand fighting, they became unconscious victims of despondency which bore no accurate relation to the fluctuating fortune of war. While it is probably true that in the winter before America entered the war, when the reservoir of men was running dry, when food had first to be rationed and England was threatened with the "unrestricted" submarine campaign, there was better reason for depression than in September 1914 or March 1918, when the danger was past before it had been fully realised, it is also true that depression continued when improving news from the front should have relieved it. There is a close connection between a temporarily weakening morale and the first decline in the standard of living: by the end of 1916 food was deteriorating in quality and quantity; digestion and nerves were affected; bodily vitality became impaired. There is a connection no less close between mental vitality and light; an ill-lit room produces low spirits, and London was ill-lit after the first threat of an air-raid. Further, the health of mind and of body is dependent on sleep; and, if a civilian may criticise the strategy of the German air-service, it may be suggested that it would have done better to aim at breaking British morale by keeping Britain awake at night. The material achievement of the raiders must have been disappointing to the German general staff: the destruction of life was insignificant; the damage to property trifling; it may be doubted whether the bombs dropped on railways, munition works and public buildings retarded the pace of the war by an hour; there was no widespread panic; the civilian population was never driven to sue prematurely for peace, the seat of government was never transferred. To this extent the air-raids were a failure.
If this contention be just, the most successful phase of the campaign was reached one week when there were six raid nights in succession. London was, in consequence, fretful and neurotic. While no one had the honesty to admit that he was frightened by raids, a few would admit their effect on the nerves of others. With the approach of evening the anxious Londoner calculated from the age of the moon and the height of the wind that it was, perhaps, a "good night for the Gothas." "I wonder whether they'll come to-night," he would observe conversationally, as he went in to dinner; and, whether they came or not, the atmosphere was affected by vague, hardly perceptible uneasiness. When the attack was inopportunely timed, dinner would be interrupted while children were flushed from bed and littered down in hall or cellar. Every taxi disappeared from the streets, the tube stations were filled with highly scented aliens and the anxious Londoner walked home between the bombardments of the anti-aircraft guns, perhaps to find that he was homeless, roofless or windowless. After a broken night, he awoke with a headache; and, if government offices were representative of London as a whole, a proportion of the morning would be spent in exchanging anecdotes of the raid.
IV
At mid-day on the Wednesday in Easter week, after one or two false starts, the members of Mr. Balfour's mission entered a private bay at Euston, where the presence of a special train aroused among the porters mild speculation which died away in the opinion that the king was making an unadvertised journey. The Admiralty was represented by Rear-Admiral Sir Dudley de Chair and Fleet-Paymaster Lawford; the War Office by Major-General (Sir) Tom Bridges, Colonel Spender-Clay, Colonel Dansey and Major Rees; the Foreign Office by Lord Eustace Percy, Mr. Maurice Peterson, Mr. A. Paton and (Sir) Geoffrey Butler; the Board of Trade by Mr. F. P. Robinson; the Wheat Commission by (Sir) Alan Anderson; the Ministry of Munitions by Mr. W. P. Layton and Mr. M. L. Phillips; the Bank of England by its governor, Lord Cunliffe. Mr. Balfour's personal staff consisted of Sir Eric Drummond, (Sir) Ian Malcolm and Mr. Cecil Dormer. A later boat was to bring others who joined the mission in Washington.
At two o'clock the special train left Euston for a port chosen by the Admiralty, but not disclosed. At a time chosen by the Admiralty, the mission was to embark on an unknown ship for an unknown destination on the western side of the Atlantic, there to escape for a few weeks from the imminence of war and to look upon a country which seemed own sister to the England which all had known before August 4, 1914.