MILITARISM AND PARTY-POLITICS 393 



experts whom they ignore — for we have heard politicians who 

 constantly ridicule experts of all kinds. The fact is that the 

 party-politicians feel an instinctive dislike for experts and 

 indeed for all knowledge. They do not thrive by studying 

 matters, but by pretending to the intellectual dregs of the 

 population that they know everything. They are quacks crying 

 their wares in the market-place — patentees of commercial medi- 

 cines to cure all ailments of the State. Secretly they dread 

 knowledge, for if the public were to possess more of it they 

 themselves could not exist. But the matter is still worse than 

 this, for in order to save their personal positions they dare not 

 impose disagreeable legislation on the mob however necessary 

 such legislation may be for the safety or the welfare of the State. 

 If they do venture upon any disagreeable legislation, it is legisla- 

 tion which is disagreeable only to the classes which have few 

 votes. They are all alike in this respect, and, however much 

 they may pretend to the contrary, are really guided in the first 

 place by their own interests and those of their party rather than 

 by those of the nation and of the world. Just as militarism is 

 the Spirit of Force so is party-politics the Spirit of Falsehood. 

 These are the evil spirits which have destroyed the woods and 

 villages of Belgium ; which send our young men by the thousand 

 like sheep to the slaughter ; which fill the world with widows 

 and orphans, and which devastate the prosperity of whole 

 nations. 



Let us hope that this war may have not one, but two effects ; 

 that it will not only diminish militarism, but the still meaner and 

 viler Spirit of Self-Service. After all, even aggressive militarism, 

 wicked as it is, gives the advantages of science, work, and 

 discipline to the nation which believes in it ; but the other 

 imposes upon its advocates the worship of lower things— of the 

 false statement, the false argument, the avoidance of toil and of 

 obligations, and the acquisition of wealth without labour and 

 distinction without merit. In this sense, but for her aggressive- 

 ness, Germany would have shown a truly noble spirit — that 

 which impels all her citizens to die as they have done, perhaps 

 by millions, for their fatherland. It is difficult to find so much 

 of this spirit here, except only in the noble men who have 

 volunteered to do that for their country which every able-bodied 

 man should be proud to do without the asking. In this matter 

 our politicians have been lying to us, and we have been lying to 



