Note 7 — Chapter V · THE MILITARY SITUATION

Sir John Simon (Attorney-General and a Cabinet Minister), at Ashton-under-Lyne, November 21, 1914.... This speech is instructive reading. It is also comforting for the assurance it contains, that if the speaker approved of our taking part in this war (as he vowed he did) his audience might rest satisfied that it was indeed a righteous war; seeing that war was a thing which, on principle, he (Sir John Simon) very much reprehended. And yet we are not wholly convinced and reassured. There is a touch of over-emphasis—as if perhaps, after all, the orator needed the support of his own vehemence to keep him reminded of the righteousness. The pacifist in war-paint is apt to overact the unfamiliar part. One wonders from what sort of British officer at the front the Attorney-General had derived the impression that 'one' of our own voluntary soldiers—gallant fellows though they are—is the equal of 'three' of the Germans who face him, or of the Frenchmen who fight by his side.... This speech puts us not a little in mind of Evangelist's warning to Christian, with regard to Mr. Legality's fluent promises to relieve him of his burden—"There is nothing in all this noise save a design to beguile thee of thy salvation."