Review of Revieiri, 1/7/06. 



Character Sketch, 



JOHN BULL AS INTERNATIONAL HOST. 



"Behold a New Heaven and a New Earth." 



PROEM. 



I had been sitting <ip to the small hours discuss- 

 ing with one of His Majesty's Ministers the new 

 vast vista of promise that had been opened out 

 before the nations by the General Election. It 

 was glad springtime in the fields, but it was a still 

 gladder springtime in die hearts and minds of those 

 who rejoiced with exceeding great joy over the total 

 vanishing of the long winter of our discontent and 

 the coming of the gladsome May. Afterwards 1 

 slept, and in my sleep I dreamed I had returned to 

 Russia. Black winter still reigned supreme, and the 

 desolate fields were scourged by winds and storm. 

 But worse than wintry wind, worse even than pesti- 

 lence and famine, was the clashing of Terror Red 

 with Terror Black in a dull universal atmosphere of 

 suspicion lit up ever and anon by the glare of 

 incendiary fire and torn by the crash of exploding 

 bombs. Everywhere hatred, nowhere love. 



And it seemed in my dream as if my companion 

 asked me : 



" Love — what, is love ?" 



And immediately I answered as if the words had 

 been spoken through me, rather than as if I myself 

 had conceived them : 



" Love is God in solution." 



"Then," said my companion, "what is God?" 



And I answered as before : 



" God is Love in essence." 



Then it seemed to me as if the sole object of life 

 was that God might become incarnate in Man as 

 Love, and that by Love through us, God might be 

 manifested to those who know Him not. 



I awoke from my dream with a sense of having got 

 a new grip upon an old truth. Slowly as my waking 

 senses pieced together the words uttered in the dream 

 with the conversation of the previous night, I seemed 

 to reali.se that the triumph of the party of Progress 

 at the late Election was a political manifestation of 

 incarnate Love. Love for the common people, the 

 dim toiling myriads at the base of the social pvramid. 

 Love for the nations crushed beneath the load of 

 intolerable militarism. After long years the Condi- 

 tion of the People Question stands as first order of 

 the day on the National Agenda Paper. And the 

 formation of a League of Peace is the declared 

 object of our foreign policy. 



The oppressor to dethrone, the proad to whelm 

 The tenth Avatar comes. 



And so I fell a-thinking of things that might be 

 attempted and might be done under this new dispen- 



sation if we but realised the greatness of our oppor- 

 tunity, and if Britain, finally sloughing her ancient 

 hereditan- role of the Viking and the Conqueror, 

 were to evolve as the friend, the lover and the 

 benefactor of mankind. 



Why not? 



And then I bethought me of the great vision of 

 things to come which, after glowing for months past 

 as a remote and unattainable ideal, has suddenly 

 promised to realise itself into solid fact here and 

 now. 



For with C.-B. and his Cabinet one feels that 

 almost all things are possible. We have now Minis- 

 ters who have faith in their fellow-men and the 

 courage that is born of faith, with the passion of 

 s)Tnpathy in their hearts. Behind them stands an 

 awakened nation trembling with the intensity of ex- 

 pectant hope. 



And now let us consider one simple and obvious 

 method by which they can do something practical 

 towards the realisation of that ideal. 



L— THE FORMULA OF THE NEW POLICY. 



The formula of the next onward step in civilisation 

 is Decimal point One Per Cent. The acceptance of 

 that formula is the key to the adoption of the new 

 active policy of peace to which the British Govern- 

 ment stands committed before the' world. It is a 

 cryptic saying which, being interpreted, is seen to 

 hold within itself the clue to the League of Peace, 

 of which mankind has been thinking ever since Sir 

 Henry Campbell-Bannerman made his speech last 

 December in the Albert Hall. It is a practical 

 recognition that the time has come w^hen, instead of 

 merely pra\ing for peace, we must work for peace, 

 and that instead of talking about peace, we must 

 pay for peace. For Decimal point one per cent, 

 means that in the future all civilised nations must 

 have their Budget for the Campaign of Peace as 

 well as their Budget for Preparation for War, and 

 that, as a beginning, it should be recognised that 

 for every one thousand pounds spent on the Army 

 and Navy, the Governments, which are the joint 

 trustees of civilisation, must in future devote one 

 pound for the active promotion of peace, interna- 

 tional fraternity and the universal enlen/c cordiah. 



It is constantly urged that our Armv and Navy 

 Estimates are Peace Budgets, in that thev insure us 

 against war by putting us in such a state of defence 

 no one dares to attack us. Granted. But the time 

 has come when the common sense of mankind and 

 the conscience of civilisation recognise that it is 



