What the War Did to the Dictionary
BY SIMEON STRUNSKY
THE war’s demands upon the energies of mankind were not so overwhelming that a good many people everywhere did not find time, in the midst of the battle, to speculate concerning what the world would look like after the war. I say, people found time. It would be truer to say that they made time. One way to win escape from the agonizing actuality was to wonder about what it would all lead to. People reached out for the far-off interest of an ocean of tears. Some of us were content with nothing less than a vision of what ‘the world ’ would be after the war. Others were satisfied with the future of Democracy, of Labor, of Woman, and so on down the list, to what the war would do for literature in general, for fiction in particular, for aseptic surgery, for wireless, for cooperative housekeeping, for American trade in South America, for university professors, for defective children, for the servant problem.
The war is over, and prophecy concerning its effects has made way for appraisal. The accounts are being balanced. The literature dealing with the war’s effects upon the world and its component parts, from Democracy to household help, is increasingly plentiful and, on the whole, useful. It serves a double purpose. It is valuable as a positive contribution to our knowledge of what the world does look like to-day. In the second place, by making possible a comparison between things as they are and things as we expected them to be, it supplies a test of man’s talent for prophecy under exceptional stimulation. Checking up pre-war forecasts by post-war facts is obviously something of an inquiry into the operations of the human mind.
Common to nearly all forecasts of the new era was the belief that out of the war would emerge an intensified reality in thought and in speech. What else could be the result of the bitter reality that had come upon mankind? The war was a four-years’ test of men, institutions, creeds, and words. Its hot breath was bound to destroy the cobwebs of illusion, the superstitions, the shoddy thoughts and tinsel formulas by which men managed to live in normal times. From the spectacle of nations and social institutions in collapse, men would turn to a searching inquiry into the reality of institutions. From a discredited leadership would arise a challenge to the reality of established conceptions concerning masters and men. And from the primitive fact of the trenches would come a ruthless skepsis as to the ultimate meaning of words.
If any single prophecy could be put forward with confidence, it was this: that men coming back from the trenches would be mercilessly insistent on stripping language of its peace-time superficialities, and upon reducing words to the hard kernel of fact. It seemed inconceivable that men should continue to play with words after a war in which so many men had died for so many formulas. Of the new order, it should no longer be said that men lived, not by bread alone, but also by catchwords.
That prediction has not been justified. We have come out of the war apparently as susceptible as ever to the free and easy play of the catchword and the pat phrase. So far as the passion for reality in speech is concerned, the war has been fought in vain. Numerous slogans and forms have perished, no doubt, but their place has been filled by the mobilization of a new meretricious vocabulary. Not more than three words of to-day are needed to serve as a test of what the war has not done to make words real. These three words are — Publicity, Propaganda, Liberalism.
PUBLICITY
The word was not born with the war. We had been using it a good many years before 1914, in connection with our own problems in progressive Democracy. We had applied publicity to our nominations for public office, by substituting the primary for the convention. We applied it to campaign expenses. We compelled newspapers to publish their circulation figures and the names of their editors, owners, and bondholders. We forced a semi-publicity upon corporations, in the form of reports to a government agency.
The result has been neither failure nor overwhelming success. Bosses still manage to work behind closed doors. Corporations avail themselves of the services of legal experts in protective obscuration. There are ways of contributing to your candidate’s campaign fund beyond the niggardly maximum fixed by law. Nevertheless, we cling, and rightly, to our faith in publicity as one of the safeguards of a democratic system. It does not cure everything from ague to zymosis, but it helps measurably in a sufficient number of cases.
The war conferred on publicity an enormous vogue. The reason, of course, was secret diplomacy. The evil that secret diplomacy had wrought, publicity was to cure. What secret diplomacy had made possible, publicity was to make impossible. In reaction from a scheme of things under which treaties were made and kept hidden by chancelleries, and wars were made by cabals, there was henceforth to function in the sphere of international affairs the rule of open debate and public bargaining. To this ideal, I imagine, right-thinking men still subscribe.
But how much publicity? Common sense rejects the demand for a hundredper-cent publicity in international affairs, such as never has been attained and never will be attained as long as men are men. Woodrow Wilson’s sin against one-hundred-per-cent publicity is one of the principal counts in the radical indictments against him. The open covenants openly arrived at have been meat alike for the impassioned revolutionary and for the calloused newspaper-man; of whom the latter, at least, ought to know better.
In what relation of life do people ever give public utterance to all that is in their hearts and minds? The argument is elementary and commonplace; but this is just the point: that men emerging from the bitterly hard facts of a war do have to be reminded of the elementary and commonplace. Where is the pat riotic society, Elks’ Lodge, Dorcas meeting, church conference, labor-union, revolutionary council, parents’ association, or parliamentary assembly, that does not go into ‘executive session’ in emergency, and particularly when it wants to get things done?
Take as non-imperialistic a group as you can think of — a union of coalminers demanding more wages with which to buy more food. The wagedemands are made in open convention, but it is safe to assume that the schedules were approved in ‘executive session.’ When President Wilson calls upon the United Mine Workers of America to abide by his wage-awards, President Lewis of the Mine Workers and his associates meet in private. Is it because Mr. Lewis is a Koltchakist, and the Secretary-Treasurer of the United Mine Workers is an emissary of international capital? Or is it because the situation calls for a heart-to-heart talk between officials and delegates, which it is for the best interest of the miners that the coal-operators shall not overhear? It is not inconceivable that Mr. Lewis told his men that the President’s award must be accepted because there were so many thousand miners eager to go back to work, and the prolongation of the strike would disrupt the union. It is not inconceivable that Secretary-Treasurer Green reminded his associates that, ‘between ourselves,’ the miners ought to have dug more coal than they did. Such confessions are not shouted into the public ear.
Criticism has not exacted the same publicity from the miners’ union that it demanded from the Peace Conference at Versailles; yet the reasons that held for a limited publicity among miners at Indianapolis were valid to a greater degree at Versailles. What did Premier Orlando tell the Council of Four in private? It is a fairly safe bet that he told them that, if Italy did not get what she wanted, Italy would go to the devil — and with a very large measure of truth. Italy was bankrupt, and seething with revolt, and generally unhappy; but it was not for the interests of peace that Germany should be informed of the fact in open forum, let alone the sheer impossibility of Orlando, or any spokesman for any country, bringing himself to say such t hings in the open.
No; with regard to the Peace Conference, the war did not teach us respect for hard facts. We did not say: ’Come now; there is a war to be settled and a world to be reorganized. The work must not be done in a corner. But how much publicity can we reasonably ask for; how much can we hope reasonably to obtain; and how much do we really need? This is no time for ear-tickling catchwords about one-hundred-percent publicity. It is a time for realities.’ People did not say that. The temptation to sneer at open covenants openly arrived at was too strong. So outraged idealism sneered, and the diplomats did not give a hang, and the world knew pretty well what was going on at Paris.
These lines are written during the first days of the meeting of the Assembly of the League of Nations at Geneva. The Assembly has just voted down Lord Robert Cecil’s motion for full publicity in the proceedings of the select committees of the League. Why? Is it because the League is imperialist at heart? or is it because a committee of delegates from forty-two nations, in public debate, would never get anywhere? We will put the case bluntly. A secret committee, in which every man can get off what is on his chest, is better than a full-dress public debate for the benefit of the reporters; after which a few men will get together in a corner and settle things. I am writing on the day after Mr. Barnes, the British Labor delegate to the Assembly of the League, has spoken out in favor of admitting Germany into the League. So has the delegate from Argentina. In favor of Germany’s coming in are Switzerland and the other neutrals. Yet neither England nor Argentina nor Switzerland will propose in so many words that Germany be admitted. Why? Because they know that France is hostile to the idea. But why not speak out, nevertheless, seeing that everybody is in on the secret? Because there is all the difference in the world between saying, ’I think Germany ought to be admitted,’and saying, ‘I move that Germany be admitted.’ One is a criticism of France, the other is a challenge to France. If England refused to go further than criticism, it was because she did not want to precipitate a crisis. Publicity did not enter into the situation. The matter had publicity enough.
The crimes of the old order against publicity as practiced in Western Europe are regularly contrasted with the new order in Russia. The Bolshevists gave the secret treaties to the world. They speak to the nations by wireless. They practise one-hundred-per-cent publicity. Always? Not always. There was a peace conference between Soviets and Poles at Riga, in October. Among those present was the correspondent of one of our weekly periodicals, which has been foremost in denouncing secret diplomacy, foremost in its demands for one-hundred-per-cent publicity. And this is what the special correspondent wrote to his paper: —
Now, however, after this last conference, the patient took a turn for the better. Joffe and Dombski met privately, where Perle, Barliczki, and Grabski could n’t mess into matters. In short, secret diplomacy was inaugurated. And, by the way, right here, although it may be to my disadvantage as a pressman, I must state quite frankly that no peace negotiation is possible except in secret. The open sessions of the Riga conference showed that. The formal interchange of speeches through interpreters, often about matters which could be arranged in a minute’s private conversation, the inability to be frank and let the other fellow know what one really wanted because the Argus-eyed one was hovering about to make a scandal — these things proved themselves insuperable obstacles to making peace and gave the mischief-makers like Grabski endless opportunity for obstruction. But when Joffe and Dombski began to talk privately, things looked up.
PROPAGANDA
When your opponent is more reticent than he should be, he sins against publicity. When he is more voluble than he should be, he sins by propaganda. To say propaganda is to pronounce condemnation. Propaganda has become synonymous with lies.
Yet the word has a high origin. One of the great organizations of the Roman Catholic Church is the Congregation de Propaganda Fide—for the dissemination of the true faith. Before the war, propaganda was the preachment of a doctrine or a system. The word was most frequently applied, perhaps, to the preachment of revolutionary doctrine. When people spoke of revolutionary propaganda against the Tsar, they meant a far from ignoble thing. The word had its terrific connotation with the militant Anarchists. Their ‘ propaganda of the deed ’ meant bombs; not a pleasing mode of persuasion, but certainly not a lie. A very hard fact to refute, a bomb.
In the war everybody used propaganda and, I suppose, everybody in varying degree misused it, in the sense of suppressing truth or putting forth lies. Personally, I see no compelling reason why a war that made use of chlorine gas should abstain from using lies to promote the sole purpose of war, which is to defeat the enemy. At the same time, it is far from the fact that all war propaganda was lies. The point is obvious and needs no stressing. Belgium, for instance, had sufficient material on which to base a truthful propaganda against her invaders. At the present writing, Vienna has enough genuine material on which to base her propaganda of hunger.
Propaganda passed out of the war and into peace in this distorted form. It remained the common term for sinister falsehood and for bitter truth. As a result, truth has been the sufferer. The truth, when told with a purpose, is rejected as propaganda. Yet that is not the worst of it. The mischief is that propaganda is in the same breath described as a lie and as possessing terrific efficacy. In other words, ‘propaganda,’ as it is bandied about to-day, is a slur and a sneer against the human intelligence. It calls up the picture of an irresistible, malignant force preying upon a helpless and stupid humanity. It is for anyone to publish the lie, and the world must swallow it. Only I do not for a moment believe that this is so. I have greater faith in the common man’s immunity against lies, in his common sense, in his knowledge of the world he lives in — and in his sense of humor. Propaganda has been vastly overestimated, frequently in its scope, always in its effectiveness. Propaganda did not play the part in the war which is so unquestioningly assigned to it.
The fortunes of the war were not shaped by the propaganda of words but by the propaganda of events. Allies were won and lost, not by words, but by battles. The morale of armies was cemented or shattered, not by words, but by cannon. The morale of nations was maintained, not by words, but by victory or the hope of victory, and was undermined, not by words, but by defeat or the imminence of defeat. It was the German plaint that British propaganda brought America into the war on the side of the Allies. That is rubbish. Even if we put aside the causes, lying deep in our national history, that would inevitably have brought us into the war against Germany, what British propaganda was needed to sway America after the invasion of Belgium, after the Lusitania, after the U-boat warfare? It was not German propaganda that held us back from the war for two and a half years, but, again, the facts of our own nat ional life. Propaganda may have raised a bit of a flurry here or there, but, on the whole, propaganda of the word was a cork bobbing along on the great tide of fact.
Those who sorrow over Woodrow Wilson’s betrayal of the liberal cause have been in the habit of reminding Mr. Wilson that it was he who, by propaganda (in the original honorable sense), broke down the resistance of the German people and the German army. They describe Mr. Wilson’s great warspeeches as so much high explosive flung over the German trenches into the ranks of the Germans at home. Yet the simple truth is that not Mr. Wilson’s words defeated the German army, but Foch’s guns and Pershing’s doughboys. Neither do I believe that Lenin’s propaganda undermined the morale of the German troops on the Eastern front; but, again, Foch and Pershing. For more than a year the German troops on the Eastern front stood looking on while Russia was in revolution. For nearly half a year they stood exposed to Lenin’s propaganda by fraternization. Yet when the German troops were transported to the Western front, they retained sufficient morale to smash the Allied line in the early spring of 1918. And up to July 18, when the French-Americans broke the German line between Soissons and the Marne, the German soldiers and people were impervious to propaganda, whether Wilson’s or Lenin’s. The Germans were not defeated because they grew suddenly susceptible to propaganda. They grew susceptible to propaganda because they were defeated.
It was not the preachment of the word that carried Bolshevism into Central Europe after the Armistice, but the impulse of events. What I wrote for the Atlantic Monthly from Paris nearly two years ago has been proved true. Defeated nations have succumbed to Bolshevism, or hovered on the brink of Bolshevism. Victorious nations have escaped it entirely, or cast it off easily. To the extent that Bolshevist ideas have won a certain amount of sympathy and hearing in the United States, the thing has not been brought about by the propaganda of words, but, to a very considerable degree, precisely by the discomfiture of a propaganda of Words. American sympathy for the Soviets has been largely a reaction from the anti-Bolshevist propaganda on which this country was gratuitously fed from official sources. The anti-Soviet propaganda of Mr. Creel, Mr. Burleson, and Mr. Mitchell Palmer made a harvest — for Lenin.
But, in the main, such pro-Bolshevist sympathy as exists in America to-day is due neither to Mr. Creel’s anti-Bolshevist propaganda nor to direct proBolshevist propaganda. Not words, but facts, have counted. Primarily, it has been the simple fact that the Lenin régime, whose early demise we all predicted, has maintained itself. As the Soviet armies continued to beat off one White attack after another, there arose in this country something of the admiration that always goes out to the victor. It has been a manifestation of the band-wagon spirit implanted in the heart of man. The real Bolshevist propaganda has come, not from Lenin’s oratory and Moscow’s wireless arguments on Socialism, but from the Red Guards and from Moscow’s wireless bulletins of victory.
So here again, in exaggerated emphasis on the efficacy of propaganda, we have come out of the war with a new catchword. Instead of bringing back a sharper insight into the facts that make for social disorganization and for Bolshevism, or into the facts that made for America’s going into the war on the side of the Allies, or into the facts that have gone to the shaping of a hundred problems of the war and the peace, we have come out with a new formula, with a belief in the magic properties of a new word, Propaganda.
This new catchword works for muddled thinking and for a denial of human dignity. You deny the sound instincts and the intelligence of the common man when you represent him as being moved, not by what he sincerely feels or by what he understands, but, like a gaping yokel, by an incantation of words. Under the theory of propaganda, all the people are being fooled all the time. They went to war in 1917 because they were fooled by somebody’s propaganda — England’s or Mr. Wilson’s. The kept out of war until 1917 because they were fooled into indifference by Bernstorff’s propaganda. They sympathize with Ireland because De Valera fools them. They resent Sinn Fein because Dublin Castle fools them. Under this hypothesis, men cease to be human beings with a fair amount of knowledge, of common sense, of conscious motive, of loves and hates, of national feeling, of class-feeling, of religious feeling. They become a flight of shuttlecocks, driven back and forth from propaganda to propaganda. Which is mischievous nonsense.
LIBERALISM
The Liberal, as we knew him before the war, was the middle-of-the-road man. The Liberal temper was the halfa-loaf temper. In the spectrum of political parties or social philosophies, reading from right to left, the scale ran thus: Conservatism, Liberalism, Radicalism, Revolutionism. To-day Liberal has lost its native meaning, having been partitioned, like Poland, by its neighbors to right and left. The Conservative is now rather fond of describing himself as liberal with a small l. The radical and revolutionist have blended into ‘Liberalism’ with a capital. We do not usually go to newspaper headlines for precision of statement, but there is really a great deal of truth in the headlines that speak of the arrest or deporttation, indiscriminately, of ‘Liberals,’ ‘Radicals,’ and ‘Reds.’ Three words formerly denoting gradations in the methodology of social progress—the cautious reformer, Liberal; the rootand-branch reformer, but still reformer, Radical; and the overturner, Revolutionist — are now all in verbal coalition, ‘Liberals.’
Now the odd thing is that the name of ‘Liberal’ should have been appropriated by radical and revolutionist, who yield to no one in their contempt for what the old Liberalism stood for. The Liberal is, historically, the man of timid advances and ready compromises. He is content with much less than halfa-loaf; he will take half of that half, if he can do no better. He insists on knowing where he is going, by contrast with the true radical, who gives himself confidently to the rush of events. If we wish to be quite harsh, we may describe the old-style Liberal as the liniment vender and poulticer of society, of some use for temporary aches and small bruises, but ridiculously inept in dealing with major diseases. We might go further, and deny to Liberalism any positive influence of its own in social evolution. Liberalism is simply the resultant of two opposite forces, of reaction and revolution. When men have grown weary of Toryism, and have found out to their cost that a lurch to revolution is worse, they seek refuge and rest, for a while, in Liberalism. A philosophy of normal times and dormant passions, a philosophy of sedatives and hypodermics — thus an enemy might describe historic Liberalism, with a fair amount of justice.
But however humble, however inconsequential a thing Liberalism might be, it is at least entitled to its identity. Reformism, after all, is not dead. There are still middle-of-the-road men and half-loafers, and where are they to go, now that their name has been expropriated by the Radicals and the Revolutionists? Take the case of the Versailles Treaty. If the old usage still obtained, the Conservative would be he who regards the treaty as perfect, where it was not too easy on Germany. The Liberal would say that the treaty was not perfect, but should be accepted as the best obtainable. The Radical would reject the treaty. But the ' Liberal ’ of to-day damns the treaty beyond redemption. To him Versailles is a hideous blunder, a thing worse than the war that it brought to an end.
Now, with regard to Versailles, the old-style Liberalism deplores, but does not reject, the human circumstances under which the treaty was framed. It wastes no time in bewailing the fact that nations were not more just, or statesmen more generous, than they proved to be. But not so the ‘Liberal’ of to-day. His point of view has been perfectly stated by John M. Keynes (whom a whole conference of diplomats could not bamboozle) in the course of a review of Bernard M. Baruch’s story of the Peace Conference. It is Mr. Baruch’s argument that the treaty was the best document that could be written in the Paris of early 1919. Whereupon Mr. Keynes declares: ‘I concede that, the President being what he was, and the Allied leaders being what they were, then, in the situation described, the result could not have been otherwise.’
That is the new Liberalism. It dwells with Maud Muller in the might-havebeen.
Old-style Liberalism will not wring its hands over the fact that Mr. Wilson was Mr. Wilson, and that Clemenceau, Lloyd George, and Orlando were Clemenceau, Lloyd George, and Orlando. And one of the reasons why the oldstyle Liberalism will not repine overmuch is that it has asked itself whether any conceivable American president and any conceivable combination of Allied statesmen would have made any difference. President Smith, with Premiers Dupont, Wilkins-Churchill, and Trentini, would have produced very much the same peace.
In Mr. Baruch’s book we find one hitherto unwritten chapter of the Peace Conference, which serves admirably to bring out the distinction between the old Liberalism and the new. Among the reparations for civilian damage imposed upon Germany are the costs of Allied pensions and separation allowances. Now, the expert in international finance and in international law might form his opinion of the justice of such a demand upon the basis of his own knowledge and convictions. The plain man, to whom pensions, separation allowances, and civilian damage are all a mystery, would reason, I imagine, as follows. If pensions and separation allowances were imposed upon Germany by the bitter-end element in the Conference, then the demand was unjustified. If the claim for pensions and allowances was urged by the Liberal statesmen among the Allies, then the demand was justified. The plain man is bound to argue that the decent man does the decent thing.
As a matter of fact, our American experts were opposed to making Germany pay for separation allowances and pensions. They put up a hard fight. But, says Mr. Keynes, summarizing Mr. Baruch, ‘The Council of Four were eventually persuaded that an argument could be produced plausible enough to save the face of honor.’ This argument was set forth in a secret memorandum, prepared — by whom? By Jan Smuts. And who is Jan Smuts? He is, in the ‘Liberal’ conception, the one surviving idealist of the Conference. Smuts is the statesman who is also a poet and a prophet. Smuts was the real author of the Covenant of the League. He was the agent despatched by the Conference to use persuasion with the Bolshevists in Hungary. He was sent to Germany on a placatory mission. Long after ‘Liberals’ had lost faith in Wilson, they held fast to Smuts. Yet it now turns out that Smuts was the man who persuaded the wavering Lloyd George to impose those pension and separation costs upon Germany!
Does this destroy Smuts in the eyes of the old-style Liberals? It does not. I have said it before. If this young, generous-hearted, broad-visioned statesman argued for pensions and separation allowances, then old-style Liberals believe the thing was probably right. Or, if it was a mistake, it was certainly not a crime. Does the new ‘Liberal’ acknowledge that Smuts makes a difference? The answer is, No. I suppose Mr. Keynes would say that, Smuts being what he was, the pensions and allowances had to be exacted. He still reserves the right to reject a treaty not framed by seraphim and cherubim.
How the old-style Liberal mind reacted to the question of secret diplomacy versus open diplomacy at Paris, I have sufficiently indicated above in my paragraphs on Publicity. It is enough to recall the point there made regarding the contrast drawn by the ‘Liberals’ between secrecy at Paris and publicity at Moscow, and what happened to the contrast at Riga. The Liberalism that keeps its feet on the ground is certainly not the ‘Liberalism’ that has clamored for a publicity that we know in our hearts cannot be had, and never will be had, in the management of public affairs above the level of the town-meeting. The Liberalism that historically stands for fair play is not the ‘Liberalism’ that will denounce in Clemenceau what it approves in Lenin; that turns heterodoxy into orthodoxy when it is my doxy.
Take the question of France. If Liberalism means anything, it means the readiness to put yourself in the other man’s place. But it has been the chief Occupation of American and British ‘Liberalism’ since the Armistice to pursue with regard to France a policy of spleen and growl that betrays an utter incapacity or unwillingness to sec the other man’s side. American ‘Liberals,’ for instance, have rejected Article X, or have justified America’s rejection of Article X, on the ground that Article X involves risks for America. But they have never been able to understand why France should not take risks. British ‘Liberalism,’ speaking through so able a representative as the Manchester Guardian, has lashed out repeatedly against French imperialism, against France as the enemy of peace, against France the mad-struck nation, which refuses to see that the only course for her is a splendid gesture of generosity toward the beaten enemy.
But when it comes to Britain’s own problems, the Guardian is not so ready for the gesture of noble confidence. The Guardian wants self-government for Ireland, but insists that England, for her own safety, cannot grant independence to the Irish. The Guardian sympathizes with native aspirations in India— up to a reasonable limit; and with the aspirations of the Egyptian people — up to a reasonable limit. To the Guardian the safety of the British Isles is the axiom from which all argument must start — and properly so. But it will not, seemingly, understand that to the French people the safely of France is also a question about which there can be no arguing. Upon the errors of French policy in Europe, the Guardian pronounces clear-cut judgment. With regard to British policy, it regrets, and deplores, and finds that certain things are greatly to be desired, and earnestly to be hoped.
With all sympathy and all understanding for France, it is impossible to overlook her mistakes, her wrongheadedness, perhaps her wickedness; but ‘Liberalism’ has brought to the task neither sympathy nor understanding. If the nations, according to Mr. Wilson, have broken down on the acid test of Russia, ‘Liberalism’ has made a sad failure on the acid test of France. I will not deny that this anger against France arises from the failure of a great hope. No doubt there would be a new spirit abroad in the world if France, after the victory, had said to Germany, ‘I forgive and forget. We have both suffered. Embrassons! ’ If France has failed to subscribe to the Sermon on the Mount, it is perhaps right for the enthusiast, the dreamer, the millennial prophet, to turn upon her in wrathful pain; but surely it is not for Liberalism to strike the outraged attitude. For Liberalism is precisely the temper that makes allowances for unregenerate human nature.
The attitude of ‘Liberalism’ toward France has been its attitude toward the peace as a whole. It has been an attitude of impossibilism. ‘ Liberalism ’ has attacked the peace from the standpoint of ultimates. It has grown waspish with the peacemakers, because they were only men, instead of being the ideal statesmen who exist so much more frequently in the ‘Liberal’ publications than in life. ‘Liberalism’ has worked hard to kill the League, and has thus shown that it has no right, to the name it has appropriated (quite in the spirit of Clemenceau). There is no time here and no need to discuss the League. It is enough to point out that ‘Liberal’ opinion now scoffs at an ideal which has drawn to itself the generous impulses of countless millions the world over; which has taken on the rudiments, at least, of that Parliament of Man of which the ages have dreamed; which has brought questions like disarmament and a worldcourt into the world-forum; which is, in short, the embodiment of the Liberal spirit in the sense of being a step forward and upward — a timid step, no doubt, and pitifully short of the bold flight that the hope of Armistice Day envisaged; yet a step forward. In the League the world has set up an ideal, and the ‘Liberals’ have jeered at it.
There has been no attempt or desire here to exalt the old Liberalism as an outlook and a policy. This is only a plea for correct definitions. I freely admit that the doctrine of the half-loaf is a timid thing compared with the wide sweep of the revolutionist vision. Still, that is what we have hitherto meant by Liberalism, and there is little good, there is mischief, in the confusion of names. There must still be in the world several hundred million people who are willing to take the world as the war and the peace have left it, and to do their best with it; people who, if you will, are ready to potter around in a good cause. But there is no name left for them. The radicals and revolutionists have run away with it. The champions of open diplomacy are masquerading in somebody else’s clothes.