the owners for a supposed lack of tact. Whatever they did or left undone was set down to their discredit. After all, said the foolish ones, our grates and our cellars are empty, and whose fault is it? The mine-owners', of course. Why don't they get on with their job?

And what of Mr Cook, who had earned the reprobation of all good men, who had sold the miners, body and soul, to revolutionary Russia, who had held up many of the great industries of the country, who had cost England hundreds of millions of pounds, and who had done this with no better motives than vanity and the hope of revolution? The politicians were resolved to save his face. Why his face should be saved, or how it should be saved, or for whom or what it should be saved, we were not told. There was a general feeling abroad that the fight, if fight it could be called, should not be carried to extremities. Make it up and be friendsthat was what we heard upon all sides, and we can explain it upon no other principle than that in a democracy there is something holy in numbers. Think of the nice, quiet, compact body of voters which was obedient to Mr Cook. They could turn many a doubtful election, while the poor devils of owners could not muster enough voters at a poll to make a difference to anybody. But if you are in for a battle -and Mr Cook used none but martial metaphors,-you should

do your best to win. A general who was resolved upon a drawn battle in the midst of a campaign would very properly be sent about his business, and when once the country was engaged in fighting Mr Cook, armed at all points, it was the country's business not to save his face, but to beat him at all hazards. And henceforth the country will be a better place to live in, because it has defeated Mr Cook and his friends in Moscow.

Throughout the strike, then, everybody seemed impatient for a patched-up peace, and it seemed as though the desire of interference would destroy our chance of victory. There was scarcely a class, scarcely a profession, that was not sure it could succeed where the principals had failed. The Church was the worst offender. Its ministers contrived meetings with Mr Cook; they proclaimed aloud that a little goodwill was sufficient to settle all the differences which separated class from class. And then, as though to prove that they knew not the meaning of goodwill, they proclaimed aloud that England was deliberately set upon starving the women and children of the outraged miners. That the miners took advantage of every philanthropic agency, that they demanded the help of the Guardians and other public bodies as a right, that, while they refused to work, they still expected to be fed at the public expense, mattered nothing to these fanatical prelates.

That they should fail in their endeavour to promote an insincere peace was a foregone conclusion. But they persisted in evil-doing, encountered, as all others encountered, the immovable opposition of Mr Cook, and found that the only satisfaction granted them was to see the day of peace indefinitely postponed by their ministra tions.

The Ministers of government failed little less flagrantly than the ministers of religion. The result of their interference was also to prolong the strike. That the owners should offer terms to the miners' leaders was plainly impossible, and the Government could but fill the miners with a false hope that their extravagant demands might be met by another subsidy. And in truth the Government had not the power, even if it had the will, to compose the dispute. Peace could come only by agreement of the combatants, or by a victory obtained by one or other of them. Thus, indeed, peace came at last to the coal industry, and the exertions of the busybodies did not advance by an inch the end of the struggle. The strike has taught us many lessons, and not the least of these is the lesson that in the presence of two combatants they who are not concerned in the business would do well to

mind their own business. And now that peace has come once more to the coalfields, it is the duty of the Government to see to it that such a blow should not again be struck at the industries of the country by a gang of politically ambitious agitators. Had not the Act of 1906 placed the Trade Unions above the law, had not all the cruelties, now known ironically as peaceful picketing, been permitted, the miners would have gone back to work long before they did. The evils created by legislation twenty years ago must be remedied by the present Government, and steps must be taken to ensure the freedom of the working classes from the harsh contemptuous slavery imposed upon them by their tyrannical leaders.

Vol. XI.-The Outbreak

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cried aloud that the charge of war guilt brought against them was now withdrawn. Of course it was not withdrawn, and the Germans, unabashed, went on with the violent propaganda with which for some years they have covered the allied countries. We have all seen specimens of these documents, which the Germans send broadcast over the world. They are violent, contemptuous, and yet tinged, like all German documents, with the humility of the injured personage. They would have us all know that, while they were doing their best to preserve the peace of the world, the Allies were filled with the lust of war and conquest. And, to make their course easier to run, they have persuaded certain Englishmen, moved some of them by the vanity which would induce them to put their names to any document proffered them, others by the cannibalism which has always made certain superior persons too ready to make a meal of their own land, to give them their support in leaflets. It is just as well that we should know the names of the enemies in our midst, though, indeed, it were easy enough to guess them. "A batch of leaflets," we are told by The Times,' "recently circulated by the Fichte Association in Hamburg, contains a 'British Appeal to Conscience,' issued last year over the signatures of such prominent Englishmen as the Bishops of Manchester and Birmingham, Pro

fessor Gilbert Murray, Professor A. F. Pollard, Mr Bernard Shaw, and Mr H. G. Wells, and also leaflets entitled 'How France Concocted the War Lies,' The Conspiracy of Silence,' 'The Versailles Conspiracy,' and Americans testify against the old Lie.'" They are all there, the intellectual gentlemen, who are proud to show that they are superior to the sense of patriotism, or even, where their own country is touched, to the sentiment of justice. Were they absent from such a list, we could not but deplore that they had lost their cannibal appetites. But they are not absent, and England is the stronger and the happier for their well-advertised defection. That such men should prefer their country's enemies to their country itself causes us neither surprise nor regret. We like to see them openly ranged upon the other side.

And then came the British documents to prove to all those who are not so deeply sunk in anti-patriotism that they can neither hear nor read aright, the passion and the patience with which Sir Edward Grey and the Foreign Office upheld the cause of peace. The fact that Germany was resolute for war, because she did not believe that England would in any case support her Allies, is evidence not of Germany's love of peace but of Germany's stupidity. As you read the letters which came into the Foreign Office from all the

capitals or went out from it to Berlin and Vienna and St Petersburg, you are struck chiefly by the slow passage of time. Every day produces a vast courier, and yet so little is done, so little is said effectively. To the most important letters no immediate answers are forthcoming. Never does Sir Edward Grey cease to hope. He wishes to engage the four great powers-England, France, Germany, and Italy, none of them, as he falsely believes, comImitted to war-in an amiable discussion, which shall presently bring Russia and Austria to accept amiable terms. And he does not realise for a moment that it is Germany's war which is going to break out, that Germany is determined, at all hazards, to send no counsels of prudence to Austria. Sir Edward Grey, indeed, comes no better out of the 'British Documents' than he does from his apology for his own career. That he meant well is clear enough. That he served the cause of peace, which he had always at heart, in any practical fashion is not clear at all. He lacked the strength and the power of decision. He could neither dominate his Cabinet nor accept its views. He wavered, and was lost. Sensitive to obligations, which then did not matter, such as that he had promised France no more than diplomatic support, he let the hour of action go by. Sir Edward Goschen admits that even Tirpitz, the flaming firebrand of Germany, did not

wish to "rub England the wrong way," and it is possible, even probable, that had Germany been told by Sir Edward Grey that, if war came, England would be on the side of France and Russia, Germany, who still through the Kaiser controlled the European situation, would have decided against

war.

So the war came-came because Germany willed it-with no better reason than the murder of an Archduke, whom few mourned either at Vienna or Buda-Pest, and whose death was nevertheless made a pretext for the greatest war that ever was known on earth. The effect of the documents, now published, is cumulative, and nobody can read them without coming to a firm conclusion that Germany divides the responsibility with Austria-Hungary alone; that, even more than this, Germany, by sending to Vienna a word of advice, might have checked the war-policy of her parasitic ally at any moment. Nor are the documents themselves the only valuable part of the collection. The minutes made upon the papers by the higher officials of the Foreign Office are of the highest importance. "They were," as as the editor says, "written upon the spur of the moment with full confidence that they would under no circumstances be published, at any rate until very many years had elapsed. They therefore show better than anything else could, the impression made at the time on those

Of those who wrote minutes upon the correspondence, none comments upon events with greater knowledge and a finer judgment than Sir Eyre Crowe. From the very first he seems to have understood what must surely happen. He was deflected from his settled opinion neither by prejudice nor ignorance. He knew the problem which England was asked to solve, and his acquaintance with the Chanceries of Europe was so wide and so deep that he could interpret the letters which were sent by our Ambassadors abroad in a flash, and read clearly and openly what they merely hinted at. His

knowledge of Germany and her character seems never to have been at fault. And we can only say that fortunate was the Foreign Office which had Sir Eyre Crowe for its brain. Immeasurably inferior to his permanent secretary, Sir Edward Grey vacillates and is in doubt. He was in perpetual dread of his Cabinet and the House of Commons. He could not walk far along the path of rectitude, nor with firm steps, because the ghost of democracy raised a warning finger to check his advance. And if only we could learn the real lessons which suffering teaches us, we should henceforth dissociate the Foreign Office, and all the swift decisions which it should make, from the lumbering, blundering machine that is called democracy.

has the best of it over his chief. Not only had he the prescience which sees the impending disaster: he knew as by instinct how to meet it. And nothing is more keenly characteristic of the two men than the chilling comment which Sir Edward adds to the wise minutes of Sir Eyre Crowe. When the Russian Minister for Foreign Affairs told Sir George Buchanan that it would be advisable for three Governments to counsel moderation at Vienna, Sir Eyre Crowe added, with an intuition of the part which Germany was playing, "I very much doubt the wisdom of our making any representations at Vienna. It is for the German Government to do this.' And Sir Edward Grey's unilluminating comment was, "I am going to see Count Mensdorff tomorrow." From the first, Sir Eyre Crowe knew precisely what the German Ambassador's sayings were worth. "Prince Lichnovsky's vague hints and apprehensions do not quite correspond to the actual situation which his Government is helping to execute." Poor man! How could they, when he was kept resolutely in the dark? On 24th July Sir Eyre Crowe summed up the whole situation with an understanding which erred not at all. The point that matters," he wrote, "is whether Germany is or is not absolutely determined to have this war now. There is still a chance that she can be

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