This sentiment was greeted with deafening applause by the thousands listening with eager ears to every word that fell from the Prime Minister. But the epithet bestowed upon the book whence he drew this example of the "good sense" it contained, roused a perfect frenzy of curiosity. Literary Conservatives imagined that Mr A. C. Swinburne was the author, and the dismay exhibited was almost beyond description when it was discovered--by the horrified _Scotsman_, I believe--that Mr Gladstone's "questionable book" was the "Secularists' Manual of Songs and Ceremonies," edited by Austin Holyoake and Charles Watts, with a preface by Charles Bradlaugh. The press comments upon the discovery are amusing to read, especially as Mr Bradlaugh was often made in some way responsible, not merely for the verse, but for Mr Gladstone's quoting it on Blackheath. Mr Giffard, Q.C., was amongst those who thought it "an outrage" that such a book should have been so quoted by the Prime Minister of England. The publisher was indictable, said he wrathfully, and the writer would have been sent to prison in the good old days when the Christian religion was more thought of.[140] But neither he nor any one else moved to prefer the indictment. [Footnote 140: Address to the Cardiff Constitutional Association.] CHAPTER XXXI. FRANCE--THE WAR. When hostilities were declared between France and Germany in 1870, Mr Bradlaugh did not take sides with either nation; he entirely and unreservedly condemned the war. He and his friends kept clear of the war fever which seemed coursing through the blood of most people. "All the evil passions of Europe are aroused," wrote Austin Holyoake, "and even children gloat over the narratives of slaughter where thousands perish. The soldier, instead of the schoolmaster, has become the foremost man, and Rage, Revenge, and Murder are the gods of public idolatry." Not a word would Mr Bradlaugh or his colleagues say to commiserate the "insulted honour of France," not a word to glorify the triumphant arms of Germany. But my father was not neutral because he was unmoved. His sympathies were always strongly with the French people, but these very sympathies made him bitterly antagonistic to the French Emperor. In the middle of August he replied to a correspondent: "You do not understand my position. I regard Napoleon as one of the greatest amongst modern scoundrels, and Bismarck as a crafty diplomatist striving to make a great German Empire under Prussia. I love Bismarck so little that when the Reform League wrote him an address, I refused to sign it. I hope to see a German republic, and I believe I shall, but this war will postpone it. I deeply regret the evoking the 'nationality' madness in France, for I fear that many of our brave Republican friends will be killed in striving to save, as they think, the flag of France from disgrace."