NOTES i55 



a nation which indulges in this evil must certainly have sunk to 

 a somewhat low intellectual level. But we allow ourselves to 

 speak in this manner in a moment of national danger only 

 because we believe that the time is ripe for such utterance. On 

 the other hand, if we deplore such intellectual failing in the 

 country, we are glad to recognise with enthusiasm and pride 

 the great moral altitude to which the nation has risen in this 

 crisis. The censure which the brigands of Potsdam have en- 

 deavoured to fasten upon us in order to justify their own real or 

 pretended hatred of us arises from the fact that they have made 

 the common mistake of judging others by themselves. It is not 

 true that the British nation have ever felt any jealousy of the 

 Germans or the slightest enmity against them. Before the war 

 we always showed them the greatest goodwill, we admired 

 their science, their organisation, and their prosperity; we taught 

 them all that we had to teach them, and we welcomed them in 

 our midst. At the beginning of the war our attitude, if not 

 always wise in our own interests, was always absolutely just 

 and proper; and during the conduct of the war we have 

 honourably fought without hate in a cause which the whole 

 world except our enemies acknowledges to be a just one. We 

 are certain as to the verdict which posterity will pronounce 

 upon our moral attitude throughout. If our intellectual capacity 

 has not been so high as our moral one, that is a matter which 

 concerns ourselves, and which must be amended by ourselves ; 

 and an offence in this category is not so heinous in the eyes of 

 that great Order of Things which controls us. Whatever our 

 intellectual failings may have been, at least we feel that our 

 rulers and ourselves have always borne within us during the 

 whole of this unspeakable war the absolution and the sanction 

 of a pure conscience. 



The National Efficiency Committee 



Readers of Science Progress will be glad to hear that a 

 committee has been formed with the title National Efficiency 

 Committee. Its original object was to perform the function of a 

 Vigilance Committee with regard to the recent temperance 

 legislature proposed by Mr. Asquith's Government, which, as 

 every one knows, came to very little, partly owing to the opposi- 

 tion of the Irish members, and partly to indifference. The 



