INTRODUCTION xxv 



seemed to me the rather florid taste of German art, 

 but not a word of Anglo-German rivalry. As a 

 matter of fact, I had completely forgotten my old 

 feelings about Germany, and was convinced that war 

 between great modern nations was a horror that 

 no statesman would face. Certainly that was my 

 own feeling and the feeling of the great majority of 

 the people I knew, up to the end of July last year. If 

 I may guess at matters of which I am ignorant, I 

 hazard the opinion that the delay of the British 

 Government, which must have seemed so strange and 

 so sinister to the leaders ol France and Russia at the 

 time, which seems even stranger to all who now read 

 the diplomatic history of the last days of peace, was 

 due only to one cause. The Cabinet must have known 

 that a great European War would have seemed an out- 

 rageous crime to Great Britain, and any abettors of 

 it criminal lunatics, until we knew that we had to fight. 

 I end this personal record with two observations. 

 To the best of my belief and judgment, thinking over 

 all I have seen and know of my fellow-countrymen, 

 Great Britain as a nation, at no time to which my 

 recollection goes back, has ever intended or wished 

 to have war with Germany, and only the shock of the 

 outrage on Belgium could have opened our eyes to the 

 broader reasons for war that were within the know- 

 ledge of statesmen. Now that our eyes are open, the 

 Germans, in the vulgar phrase, will have to "go 

 through with it," for quite apart from our conscious- 

 ness of the justice and necessity of our cause, and of 

 the horror and desolation of war, Great Britain, now 

 that it has come, seems rather to like war with 

 Germany. 



