From ‘Justice and Security’, The Spectator, 26 February 1916: If the conditions upon which we are willing to make peace are to be summarised, they cannot be summarised better than by the words Justice and Security. It is for these that we and our Allies are fighting. These are the signs in which we shall
From ‘War the leveller’, The Spectator, 12 February 1916: Strange as it may appear to the pacificist, war has levelled up, not down, as the Socialists aim at doing… In presence of a common peril the private and his officer have learned to understand one another better, and have discovered the good qualities which each possesses.
From ‘Marching through France’, The Spectator, 12 February 1916: Finally we came to the trenches themselves, and all around was desolation and ruin. There are few more mournful spectacles than a town or village lately reduced to ruins. To what purpose were all these homes sacrificed? Why are all these good people scattered and beggared
From ‘The future of Syria’, The Spectator, 5 February 1916: We say with all the emphasis at our command, and without the slightest fear of contradiction, official or otherwise, not only that we do not want Syria for ourselves, but that nothing would induce us to take it. Englishmen of all parties; or political schools of
From ‘The Crimes of Germany’, The Spectator, 29 January 1916: It would be a relief, a partial solution, if only one could say that the Germans broke loose from their officers and their habits in a lust of blood and violence. But the terrible fact is that throughout the war we have heard no word
From ‘The Conscription of Wealth’, The Spectator, 22 January 1916: At recent race meetings streams of motor-cars have proceeded from London carrying down persons engaged solely in the pursuit of their own amusement, wasting petrol, wasting the labour of chauffeurs, and diverting in hundreds of detailed ways energy which ought to have been devoted to
From ‘The Position of the Government’, The Spectator, 15 January 1916: Any man who knew the nature of Englishmen, or rather, let us say, of the English-speaking race, during war, would have been able to foretell that an enactment to compel shirkers to do their duty would be certain of something like universal acceptance… Our
From ‘A Mobilisation of the Church’, The Spectator, 8 January 1916: Suppose the Church were mobilised so that the majority of the younger clergy and all the ordinands were set free for service in the Army, the situation at the end of the war might be very different from that which we have been anticipating. There
From ‘The Military Situation’, The Spectator, 1 January 1916: The opening of a new year is a time for taking stock of our situation. When we look back upon the beliefs and predictions of a year ago, we have to admit that there have been many disappointments and that unforeseen things have happened; but war would
From ‘The Sacrament’, The Spectator, 25 December 1915: We were fairly fagged out, all of us, after a heavy day of it. One by one we scraped the thick, clinging mud off our boots as best we could and took our places at the mess-table. It was a door resting on biscuit-boxes, but we ate
From ‘Payment of members’, The Spectator, 4 December 1915: If the country could be polled at the present time, there is probably no subject upon which greater unanimity could be secured, apart from the general question of prosecuting the war, than that of payment of Members of Parliament. Barring Members themselves and the political agents whom
From ‘Public loans and private savings’, The Spectator, 27 November 1915: In the nature of things there is no reason for the permanent maintenance of the existing gulf between capitalists and wage-earners. Every wage-earner ought to be to some extent himself a capitalist, and every capitalist certainly ought to be in one way or another a
From ‘The Example of France’, The Spectator, 20 November 1915: France is an example to the world and to posterity of how a nation can bend itself to the work in hand, and labour with its whole body, its whole mind, and its whole soul. The more we know of the splendid details of this
From ‘Soldiers for the land’, The Spectator, 13 November 1915: It is certain that, when the war is over, tens of thousands of soldiers will not want to return to their former urban occupations. No man who has enjoyed the liberty of a greater world and a freer life will be reconciled easily to resuming his
From ‘News of the week’, The Spectator, 6 November 1915: We greatly regret to record a serious accident to the King. When His Majesty was reviewing troops of the First Army on the Western front the cheers of the men startled the mare he was riding. She reared up so far that, she fell and partly
From ‘W.G.’, The Spectator, 30 October 1915: The late Dr. W.G. Grace had become in his lifetime a legend, and he is likely to remain a legend as long as Englishmen play games. Never was such a cricketer; and it is almost safe to say that there will never be such a cricketer again, for the perfection
From ‘Reprisals’, The Spectator, 23 October 1915: The Germans lately executed Miss Cavell, a good and brave English hospital nurse, on a charge of harbouring fugitives. Are Englishmen prepared for such reprisals as this execution suggests? … Is there a single Englishman, no matter how many public meetings he has attended in support of reprisals, and no matter how
From ‘Boldness, Boldness and Again Boldness’, The Spectator, 16 October 1915: There are considerations of faith and honour which must in any case control the action of the allies. Serbia has been our ally from the beginning of the war, and it is now absolutely impossible for us to leave her to her fate. We must stand
From ‘Bulgaria and Greece’, The Spectator, 9 October 1915: The fact that the British people will in all probability soon be at war with Bulgaria is a matter of very deep regret, for this nation has always watched the development of the peasant state with strong sympathy… But though we can and do sympathise with the
From ‘The western victories’, The Spectator, 2 October 1915: As this is a war of heavy artillery, masses of slow-moving guns and ammunition have to be brought to fresh positions, and there installed with all the exacting formalities which are foreign to the handling of field-guns and horse artillery. Patience is as valuable as determination. There
