s

r^sOsi

."-•aw

^miw'

Bye
336

KJ..VV HAVEN, CCinvf.
No. 43
OXFORD PAMPHLETS
1914

THE LEADING IDEA^
OF BRITISH POUil

5 vSiS--^ ¦¦¦ .:

BY
GERARD COO^PJIJ?^*

SECOND IMPRESSION
Price Twopence net

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
HUMPHREY MILFORD
LONDON EDINBURGH GLASGOW
NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE BOMBAY

'^/iUa UNivERsiirv
LIBRARY

OXFORD : HOEAOB HART
PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY

THE LEADING IDEAS OF
BRITISH POLICY
It is necessary for any one who would understand the
leading ideas of British policy to run over in his mind the
long roll of our mighty dead — ^from Alfred the Great..
downwards. Only then will he understand how deep-
rooted and persistent is the imperial instinct of the
English nation . It is older than the English Parliament,;
and about as old as the English language or any other'
of the oldest things that are essentially English. It is
exemplified in our earliest annals bj' the Northumbrian
and Mercian forerunners of Alfred, and by his descendants
from Edward the Elder to Edgar the Peaceful. It was
gratified by the wars and conquests of our foreign rulers
from William the Conqueror to Richard Cceur de Lion.
In Edward III we see the most conspicuous of these early
imperialists. Edward III, besides continuing an old
and a mistaken policy of continental aggrandizement,
turned his thoughts to sea-power. He claimed, and for
a time he secured, the ' dominion of the narrow seas ',
which since his time has been regarded as vital to the
prosperity and safety of these islands ; though more than
a century elapsed from his death before England was
sufficiently united and self-confident to follow out his
naval policy with resolution and success. It was under
the Tudors that she begun consistently to behave as
though ' her future lay upon the water '.
Throughout the last four hundred years, which is the

4 THE LEADING IDEAS OF
Modern Age, the position of England has been mysterious
and complicated, and as England has become Britain
this is true also of Britain and the British Empire —
there is no doubt that this mystery is the secret of our
strength, but, as the probing of a mystery only leads to
the discovery of deeper truths, we do not hesitate to
attempt the task.
With the break-up of mediaeval Christendom, England,
like some other European countries, became intensely
national in feeling, in ambitions, in religion. At the
same time, and indeed as a part of the same process, the
English imagination turned to the New World, which
provided a boundless field for the enrichment and ex
pansion of national life and for the propagation of
national ideals. An empire of the New World was now
the dream of Englishmen. Let us consider first what
this dream of empire meant ; secondly, how Englishmen
prepared themselves to win it ; thirdly, how, in the race
for empire, England was favoured above other nations.
(1) The empire of the New World was, to begin with,
a religious ideal ; the quest for it was a crusade. The
English supposed themselves to be the chosen people,
enjoying a monopoly of divine truth. A strange belief,
it may seem, for rough sea-fariag folk such as were the
Elizabethan pioneers of the imperial idea. But we
have the very perfect example of John Davis (who
discovered Davis' Straits, and died in 1605) in those days,
and of Captain Cook in a much later age, to show how
religion may be and has been the mainspring of the con
duct of great sailors, even though their religion goes
along with characteristics that may seem irreconcilable
with a religious faith. But it was not only the seaman
who believed himself one of a chosen people. That
conviction was shared by |the merchant who went long

BRITISH POLICY 5
voyages for gain, and by the capitalist who financed the
merchant. The mediaeval Church had set her face against the
belief that the pursuit of wealth was a lawful occupation.
Her theologians held that money-getting was a proof of
avarice, and that avarice was a sin. The papal court at
Rome, the higher clergy elsewhere, might be ostentatious
and luxurious. But still the Church set her face against
the ideal of developing Nature's resources for the use of
men. The Puritan with all his faults.^was the reverse
of this : he practised a rigid simplicity in his private life,
but devoted his energies to business which meant the
piling up of wealth and the development of the world ;
he thus went far towards the solution of the economic
problem — a moderate and stationary standard of
expenditure for those who have the immediate control
of wealth combined with a real increase of the total
which all must share. Indeed it seemed that traditional
religion stood with a drawn sword guarding the entrance
to an Eden in which was to be found not only scientific
truth but also the material bounty of God. England
believed that it was her function to lead the way in
forcing an entrance for mankind into this paradise.
Like the Protestants of England, the orthodox
Spaniards had a dream and a vision of the same kind.
The Spanish Empire was based upon religious ideals.
But the English ideals though crude were less crude
than those of Spain. We understood, what the Spaniard
did not, that the gold of the waving corn is more precious
than yellow metal, and that the spirit works in its own
way demanding an atmosphere of freedom.
(2) Before the South African War we were apt to
pride ourselves on muddling through. That pride
received a fall, and now most Britons are congratulating

6 THE LEADING IDEAS OF
themselves that at the beginning of last August we had
an Expeditionary Force which could be mobilized in
a few hours, and a fieet ready for action. The successful
conduct of the government of an empire demands the
same high qualities as any other work of note ; and we
have not in fact been such muddlers as other peoples,
and we ourselves, sometimes imagine. We have often
seemed to be in a state of intellectual muddlement
because we were trying to take all the facts into con-
• sideration, and were thinking over the permanent
principles of our policy. In this sense, but in this sense
only, we have always been a muddled people whenever
we were engaged in empire-building.
When a man takes a few selected facts of any situation
into account and rules out all the others, if those selected
facts happen to dominate he will be easily and quickly
successful, but otherwise he will be lost ; likewise the
actions of a nation which has set its heart on achieving
a certain object for a few years will be easy to follow and
to appreciate, while the actions of those trained through
hundreds of years will be unselfconscious and perhaps
mysterious ; but if the training has been good they will
be very effective.
Under Elizabeth we set ourselves with a tremendous
energy to lay the foundations of the empire of the New
World ; we laid them deep and systematically ; Eliza
beth encouraged our sea rovers as far as she dared, she
also encouraged the men of the Low Countries as her
auxiliaries in the war against Spain. Burleigh, quite
systematically, built up industries from the point of view
of sea-power ; the fisheries were to be encouraged as
a school for seamen ; we were to make our own powder
and our own caimon, we were to have a plentiful supply
of naval stores — and as a result, in 1588, our fleet was

BRITISH POLICY 7
more numerous than the Spanish -Armada, our ships
could sail faster and nearer the wind, and our guns shot
more quickly and harder. But more important than
this our religion was a religion of freedom and order, for
although the main strength of English rehgion was
moving towards Puritanism and the Puritans were not
tolerant, still there was a strong religious element which
though traditional was not Roman, an element which
made possible the existence of such a family as the
Ferrers, and such an establishment as the religious
community of Little Gidding, and which represented
gentleness and charity ; moreover, Puritanism itself did
achieve toleration with the appearance of the Society of
Friends. There was therefore a spirit in England which
offered a welcome to religious refugees of the reforming
societies throughout Europe, and, besides that, the
non-religious people in England, led by the Queen, were
zealously anxious for religious peace as Ipng as it could
be reconciled with some measure of order.
Thus both the religious and non-religious elements of
England combined to draw over to us the pick of the
middle and industrial classes of Europe, and this most
important result m.ay be regarded as part of the fixed
and conscious policy of the nation.
(3) Our advantages over other nations have on the
whole been sufficiently described in Seeley's Expansion
of England ; it is only necessary here to emphasize the
great importance of the fact that we were an insular
nation, and so able to keep ourselves comparatively free
from the entanglements of continental policy. This,
as Seeley has pointed out, enabled us to concentrate our
energies much more completely than the Spaniards or
the Dutch or the French could do, on the acquisition of
the empire of the New World; but furthermore, this

8 THE LEADING IDEAS OF
concentration on the New World and aloofness from
the Old World affected the spirit of our nation and the
quality of the work we did. In the Modern Age we have
never wished or attempted to conquer Europe, we have
not wished to be supreme on the Continent, we have
taken part in continental strife only to the extent that
ourselves and our supremacy in the New World was at
stake. Oliver Cromwell might have been beguiled into taking
up the sword of Gustavus Adolphus and leading the
Protestant armies of Europe, rightly or wrongly he
resisted the temptation, and instead we fell to quarrelling
with the Dutch — our religious alhes — over the prize of
maritime supremacy ; on the surface this looks like the
policy of the backslider, but it is possible that funda
mentally we were never more true to our mission. So,
as a matter of fact, we addressed ourselves to a possible
problem instead of an impossible one. It was necessary
that the world should be opened up to the vital civiliza
tion of Europe, means of communication had to be
established over all the seas radiating out from and
returning to Europe ; the streams of commerce with
their collecting and distributing centres had to be
organized, and derelict continents peopled with emi
grants from the progressive nations — ^the primal com
mand must be obeyed, ' Be fruitful and multiply and
replenish the earth ', and the human family thus extended
must be kept in touch the one part with the other, or
brought into touch where it had been for ages separated,
so that in material, intellectual, and spiritual things
there should be interchange and co-operation.
As the leading nations had not learnt to co-operate in
equality and peace, it seemed necessary that the work
should proceed under the supremacy of one, and it was

BRITISH POLICY 9
this supremacy which we determined to -win. The
impossible problem which we avoided was the attainment
of supremacy of one nation over all the others in Europe :
this object did not correspond with the accomplishment
of any useful piece of work, neither does it so correspond
now. Europe never has been under the dominion of one
nation for a thousand years ; it last happened in the
days of Charlemagne — ^what we call the Dark Ages.
(It is, however, true that the acknowledged supremacy
of one nation over all the world to-day should make
possible the abolition of armaments, and no doubt if we
are so foolish as not to arrive at that result some better
way, we shall deserve the supremacy of one.) So the
real gist of our advantage was that the continental
nations were wasting much of their strength in useless
and demoralizing rivalry, while we were bending our main
energies to a great and really necessary piece of work.
The secret of our success and our glory was that we
were doing real work towards shaping the material earth
itself and the organization of man upon it, so that this
planet might become a perfected whole, achieving its
mission ; in fact, we stood for work rather than life,
for the future rather than the present, for achievement
rather than enjoyment.
Our constitutional and social history during the period
brings out this ideal ; we organized ourselves for an
object, not for the sake of the organization, nor, indeed,
for the sake of the people.
The Tudor form of government being a popular and
enlightened despotism, would seem to have been the best
for the purpose of attaining the sovereignty of the New
World, and no doubt it fulfilled admirably its function
of organizing the beginnings of the enterprise ; but success

10 THE LEADING IDEAS OF
was eventually achieved with a form of organization
more subtle, much more mysterious, and better adapted
for attaining quick but lasting results over an area
co-extensive with the globe. The English Parliament
has been called the mother of parHaments, and so she is.
In the later Middle Ages we established a most advanced
system of constitutional government which, from the
practical point of view, broke down in the fifteenth
century to recover itself in the seventeenth, but the
success of this constitutional government during the
eighteenth century was of a peculiar kind. Our govern
ment during the eighteenth century was in truth an
aristocracy, if by that is understood the rule of the best,
and if by best we mean the most efficient in view of the
national policy. From the point of view of a formal
constitution, it became, as the years went by, more and
more anomalous and more corrupt. The actual govern
ment was in the hands of the House of Commons, the
members . of which were theoretically elected by the
constituencies, that is to say, the shires and towns of
the country, but as a matter of fact, they were mainly
appointed by the House of Lords, whose members were
the great landowners, the leaders of the landed aristo
cracy. The essence of the situation was a world to be
conquered (the New World, not the Old World), and all
the strong men in England, whether their traditions
were religious or commercial or military, inspired or
inflamed to effect the conquest. Although the direct
political power was in the hands of the landed aristo
cracy, no caste feeling was allowed seriously to hamper
the national ideal, for after the attainment of the
religious toleration of all Protestants in 1689 there was
no serious cleavage in the solid phalanx of our military,
commercial, and Puritan efficiency, jindeed, as the

BRITISH POLICY U
foreigner observed, we were a nation of shopkeepers,
that is to say, the commercial element in the phalanx
was becoming predominant. Families soon forget their
origin ; no doubt there were many families in the
eighteenth century who assumed a blue-blooded purity
of caste, but, as Lecky has pointed out, they often enough
owed the establishment of their prosperity to a merchant
or a banker.
Thus the British system in the eighteenth century
worked, partly indeed, on account of long and great
traditions and a certain national genius for govern
ment — the cause or effect of those traditions, but more
especially because the adventurous element was given
a new world to explore, the military element a new world
to conquer, the commercial and industrial element an
unlimited market, and the religious element visions of
the Kingdom of Heaven, and the whole nation a new-
world to construct ; the system did not work on its own
merits as a system.
The best simple illustration of what we have been
saying is the important and well-known share that the
Scots have taken in the development and administration
of the British Empire ; they have entered into it so
wholeheartedly and identified themselves with it so
thoroughly because it has given unlimited scope to their
magnificent national vitality; as to the Highlanders,
it is a household word how the elder Pitt recognized their
genius for warfare — fighting they must have and fighting
they were given. What our Indian administration owes
to Scotland is equally well known, her part in Indian
evangelization is perhaps less familiar, though not less
glorious. Canada and Australasia give their testimony
to the enterprise of the Scots in all departments of life,
and the scope that was offered to them.

i2 THE LEADING IDEAS OF
Another illustration of how much the system depended
on its object is given by the immediate collapse which
occurred as soon as the object was attained ; but we shall
have to return to this later.
We have seen how England provided scope for the
enterprise of her sons, and, as always is the case when
there is something real to be done, there existed in
Britain to a very considerable extent the Napoleonic
ideal of the career open to talent ; but what about the
unenterprising, the people who would have preferred to
go on living in the old way, or indeed the inefficient — ^that
is to say, inefficient from the point of view of the national
ideal ? There were mainly two classes to be considered,
the peasantry on the land and the craftsmen in the
towns ; if the bulk of the land had continued to be held
by an irremovable peasantry, wishing to continue a
more or less immemorial system of subsistence-farming,
and impervious to the idea of the sovereignty of the
New World, the realization of that idea would have been
hampered at every step ; the solution of the problem
was a simple one^ — ^to get practically all the land into the
possession of large proprietors who were imbued with
the ideal of expansion, and for them to form an alliance
with some of the more progressive of the peasantry as
tenant farmers, then with inexorable power the landlords
and farmers could and did dictate a progressive policy
for the land. Thus the land, its occupiers and culti
vators, was made into an organism highly sensitive to
the national ideal . This process was not indeed complete
until the early years of the nineteenth century, but had
then been going on for a hundred years and more.
The development in commerce and industry was
similar ; the mediaeval system by which industry was

BRITISH POLICY 13
monopolized by highly organized gUds, who were mainly
occupied in each town in supplying the needs of that
town, and who held control of entry into the craft could,
and probably would, have hampered economic progress
even more effectively than a persistent body of peasant
proprietors. Commerce indeed was naturally controlled
by the wealthy few, who no doubt were convinced that
it was their duty to devote the resources at their disposal
to the development of the world, and, as we have noticed,
the opposition of the Church had for long been removed ;
but commerce is based on industry, for it consists in the
exchange of the products of industry. There were two
ways in which industry could be brought under the
control of those in touch with the national ideal : (1)
as soon as the artificer produces for a distant market
he is in the hands of the merchants who conduct the
exchange, this brings industry immediately and directly
under the control of commerce ; (2) the so-called capi
talist system by which the instruments of production —
that is to say the tools, machines, material, and organi
zation necessary for the conduct of industry — come into
the possession of a few rich men, be they merchants or
be they captains of industry.
By these methods, happening of themselves or con
sciously pursued, industry and the industrial population
also became part of that organism or body, of which the
directing head consisted of those inspired by the national
ideal. In no other country of the world at that time
was the system of national organization at all comparable
in sensitiveness, in no other country could the resources
of the nation be appHed so quickly and so completely
to the attainment of an object.
It is of course notorious that there was a dark side
to this economic policy — indeed by the time that the

14 THE LEADING IDEAS OF
national ideal was achieved that dark side was
seen to be intensely black and lowering. Britain was
ceasing to be only these small islands, and was becoming
the British Empire; this involved economic revolution,
and we have noticed how the sensitiveness and adapta
bility were attained which rendered this revolution
possible ; this sensitiveness was sufficient to make the
revolution possible, but it was not nearly sufficient to
remove all friction. The weak, the ignorant, and the
backward always suffer when there is an economic
upheaval, unless the process is conducted with tran
scendent skill and elaborate method ; no such skill or
method was at our disposal, but we established a vast
system of pubhc and private charity to save the myriads
who fell out of the ranks from actual starvation and
despair. Here, at the risk of complexity, it is necessary to
review the period of preparation (roughly speaking, from
the accession of Elizabeth to the fall of Charles I) ; in the
sixteenth century there was very generally over Europe
an economic upheaval, consequent on the break-up of
the Middle Ages and the discovery of the New World ;
to meet the stress there was very generally a poor-law
system estabhshed. In England, as in other countries,
the Government exerted itself to stem the economic tide,
to maintain a vigorous and contented peasantry on the
soil, and to save the corporate life and traditions of
the craftsmen from the economic flood. Thus far indeed
the national policy of work rather than life, the idea of
hammering the world into shape at all costs, including
the sacrifice of one's own comfort if need be, and one's
own health, had perhaps been envisaged but had not
been embarked upon. But with the fall of Charles I
this conservative and domestic policy collapsed, the

BRITISH POLICY 15
power was speedily concentrated in the hands of the
efficient of all classes, and the homes of the weak wore
sacrificed on the altar of the magnificent ideal of the
strong. Thus when we emerged in 1815 completely victorious
and completely successful (except for the loss of the
United States), having achieved the empire of the New
World, we had incurred a debt, in the intense misery
and degradation of our people, which was not experienced
by our defeated rivals.
After 1815 the policy to be pursued was obviously to
strengthen the Empire and to look after our people, and
this in the main has been our accepted policy ; but, as we
have already suggested, with the attainment of the tradi
tional objective a certain amount of disintegration set in.
We had finished the task which we had set ourselves,
we had won the empire of the New World. What next ?
asked our strong men. The answer was — Cosmopoli
tanism ; the Old World also must be brought into the
scheme. We were a nation of shopkeepers, we had
beaten Napoleon with our industry and our credit ; our
commercial and industrial classes now set to work to
extort political supremacy at home from the landowners,
and to work out cosmopolitanism in the commercial
sphere. There was first a Glasgow School and then
a Manchester School, shipping and cotton, Adam Smith
and Richard Cobden. The intellectual system produced
is generally known as Free Trade. We had won the
New World on the principle of exclusion, no other nation
was allowed to take part except in subordination to us.
Adam Smith taught that the wealth of the nations was
the wealth of a nation, that the good of one was the good
of all, that natural liberty involved a universal freedom
for manufacture and for trade ; the whole system was

16 THE LEADING IDEAS OF
shot through and through with idealism, with the know
ledge that the economic well-being of man is part of the
natural order of the will of God. As the Puritans had
overthrown the restraints of the mediaeval Church, so
the free-trader was to overcome the restraints of a self-
centred nationalism. Spiritually and intellectually, as
well as economically, the shopkeeper was the strongest
man in Britain, and the shopkeeper's philosophy con
quered. There were two grave defects in the system ; for one of
them the shopkeeper was directly responsible, for the
other he was not. In the first place the system contained
a hideous logical error, which can be stated shortly as
follows : the free-traders accepted self-interest as the
motive in a system whose main doctrine was equality of
opportunity, when of course these two principles are
incompatible, the wolf and the lamb ; seff -interest as
generally understood must destroy equality of oppor
tunity. As a matter of fact, this defect has vitiat«d
our economic system through and through ; in the
United States its ravages have been even more fatal.
Secondly, the system was one-sided ; besides commerce
and industry, it was necessary that cosmopolitanism
should take rehgion and nationality into account. To
this, however, the shopkeeper might fairly retort that
it was not his business, he had done his part; let
the Church take religion and the landowners nation
ality. Upon the whole, it is true that the Church and the
landowners have been very dilatory in doing their share
of the work, and even negatively their criticism of the
shopkeeper was for long ineffective ; as a result of the
French Revolution they both had become reactionary
and obscurantist, and having lost faith in the things of

BRITISH POLICY 17
the mind they allowed the shopkeeper to establish
a monopoly in truth.
However, working along their own lines, they have
done something, and let us begin with the Church.
The Oxford Movement re-emphasized for us the catholic
idea, and their work has now attained remarkable success ;
not only among Anghcans but in the other communities
—especially the Presbyterians and not excluding the
Quakers — ^the question now is not only what of the
individual and his salvation, but what of the Church,
and what is the Church. The catholic ideal is a rela
tionship in which every man and every community is
free and good and capable of reaUzing its mission — ^in
fact, an existence open to all in the power and in the
presence of God. This ideal in the sphere of organized
rehgion is the counterpart of free trade in the subordin
ate sphere of economics. Unfortunately, the Oxford
Movement was not altogether fortunate in making its
object clear ; to the EvangeHcal it seemed to mean
sovereignty of the Bishop of Rome over all that Britons
held most dear ; to the ordinary man it meant processions,
vestments, lights, and incense ; however, that period is
passing, and we can feel growing up around us an
evangelical Catholicism.
As to the landowner : he was beaten by the shop
keeper in 1832, for the Reform Act amounted to the
enfranchisement of the middle classes ; he was beaten
again in 1849, for the success of Cobden and Bright and
their Anti-Corn Law agitation meant the dominance
of free-trade economics over the mind and the poHcy of
the nation. Beaten from his position, and unwilling and
incapable to meet his opponent in the intellectual field,
the landowner, under the leadership of Disraeli, fell back
on the traditional imperialism of Ehzabeth, which had

18 THE LEADING IDEAS OF
been supposed to be superseded since 1815. But in
advocating ' forms of permanence and power ' Disraeli
was only emphasizing the need in the political sphere for
some scheme of relationships without which the indi
vidual man is unable to operate.
The teaching of Disraeli was followed up by that of
Joseph Chamberlain, the gist of whose policy it was, that
the British Empire would be hampered in its develop
ment, if not actually strangled, unless it were provided
with an organization, that is to say, a scheme of relation
ships appropriate to its life. No doubt his early experi
ence of the government of a great and growing city
opened his mind to the human need for forms of per
manence and power.
Towards the end of the nineteenth century, beside
the ordinary man there existed two fairly well defined
schools of thought ; there was the Little Englander, who
believed in the general principles of the Empire but had
no confidence in the actual organization which had been
built up — ^he considered the more abstract thought of his
ancestors to be admirable, but the work of their hands
deplorable. On the other hand, there was the Imperialist
(whom the Little Englander called Jingo), who did not
interest himself much in general ideas, but knew that his
ancestors had won the empire of the New World, and
intended that he should keep it ; moreover, he believed
that the British had a special genius for the task
denied to other races. The South African War changed
all that ; the Little Englander could not get over
the impressive evidence which was provided that
the Dominions themselves believed passionately in the
Empire. The Imperialists were disillusioned to see that
it taxed the resources of the whole Empire to overcome
the resistance of a few thousand brave and obstinate
farmers of a race similar indeed to our own.

BRITISH POLICY 19
Thus we all now really believe in the Empire, the work
of the souls, the brains, and the hands of our ancestors,
and we none of us really believe in exclusiveness ; a
liberal imperialism has emerged which enabled us to make
the magnificent experiment of granting self-government
to South Africa.
Traditional British policy is the making of the world,
at whatever present sacrifice, into a more and more
perfect home for the imited human family, and the
British Empire is the preliminary sketch for the future
federation of the world. It may be objected that both
these things are as true or more true of the United States,
but this only strengthens the argument, for they came
from us.
We have elaborated very carefully (but, as was shown
above, very imperfectly) the economic scheme appro
priate for a united world, we have experimented in the
political scheme and done something in rehgion ; but in
all three of these departments, though we have experi
mented much, we have thought little. Except for
SociaHsm, there has been little original and vital political
thinking in Britain since Adam Smith and Burke, and
an utter dearth since Cobden ; we have, mth the one
exception, simply been stretching old ideas to meet new
demands, or indeed, sometimes simply for something to
do. We have allowed practice to outrun theory, which
is obscurantism and the negation of even the possibility
of progress — our feet are taking us whither our minds
know not.
To us has been entrusted leadership in politics and
economics, and recently our failure has been great
(though our achievement has still been great) ; if we had
provided the world with a true politic adequate to the

20 THE LEADING IDEAS OF BRITISH POLICY
conditions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it
is inconceivable that the Germans, who are an educated
people, with their minds open to ideas, could have fallen
so far as they have done under the sway of a system of
thought untenable in logic, hideous in sentiment, and
glaringly incompatible with the religion that we all
profess. The reason for our intellectual failure has lain in just
that analysing method which, when restricted to its proper
place, is so often an essential of success ; analysis no
doubt should generally come first, but synthesis must
always follow it. We have analysed life into rehgion,
politics, and economics, and have somehow persuaded
ourselves that to bring them together is to sin against
the light. The Socialists alone have attempted a
synthesis, and with all their defects they are not barren
of thought.

WHY WE AEE AT WAE
GREAT BRITAIN'S CASE
BY MEMBERS OF THE OXFORD FACULTY
OF MODERN HISTORlY
E. BARKER. H. W. C. DAVIS.
C. R. L. FLETCHER. ARTHUR HASSALL.
L. G. WICKHAM LEGG. F. MORGAN.
With an Appendix of Original Documents
including the Authorized English Translation
of the White Book issued by the
German Government
THIRD EDITION REVISED (TENTH IMPRESSION)
CONTAINING THE RUSSIAN ORANGE BOOK AND
EXTRACTS FROM THE BELGIAN GEEY BOOK
TRANSLATIONS INTO FEENCH ITALIAN SPANISH
GERMAN DANISH AND SWEDISH
AEE NOW EEADY

Paper Covers Two Shillings net {yo cents)
Cloth Two Shillings and Sixpence net {8j cents)
OXFORD: AT THE CLAEENDON PRESS
LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD
EDINBURGH GLASGOVP NEW YORK TORONTO
MELBOURNE BOMBAY (a)

YALE UNIVERSITY

a39QQ2 0029L60^8b

* •_ ?
* ^ 4f
4" The conservation of this book ^

4-

was nade possible by

?

?

4-

?

N E H

?

-«•

4-

?

and

4-

?

4>

4^

MELLON FOUNDATION

4>

4-

?
*
?
4.4.4.4.4.4.4.-5^4.4.4.4.4.4.4.4.4,4.4.
BRITISH HISTORY
^RESERVATION PROJECT
SUPPORTED BY NEH
m

1

SR*

Has