They were great believers in the Empire, they on the "Novum." Indeed, they were the only true Imperialists, since they recognized that ideas, and not actions, were by far and away the most potent instruments in the betterment of mankind. Everybody who was anybody knew that, a mere sporadic outbreak here and there (such as the one in Manchuria) notwithstanding, war had been virtually impossible ever since the publication of M. Bloch's book declaring it to be so. What, they asked, _was_ war, more than an unfortunate miscalculation on the part of the lamb that happened to lie down with the lion? And what made the miscalculation so unfortunate? Why, surely the possession by the lion of teeth and claws. Draw his teeth and cut his claws, and the two would slumber peacefully together. So with the British lion. He only fought because he had things ready to fight with. Philosophically, his aggressions were not much more than a kind of sportive manifestation of the joy of life, that happened, rather inconsequentially, to take the form of the joy of death. Take away the ships and guns, then, and everything would be all right. These views on the Real Empire were in no way incompatible with Mr. Wilkinson's desire to see all Trade Unionists armed. For a war at home, about shorter hours and higher wages, would at any rate be a war between equals in race. It was wars between unequals that had made of the Old Empire so hideous a thing. Amory herself had more than once stated this rather well. "I call it cowardice," she had said. "Every fine instinct in us tells us to stick up for the weaker side. It makes my blood boil! Think of those gentle and dusky millions, all being, to put it in a word, bullied--just bullied! We all know the kind of man who goes abroad--the conventional 'adventurer.' (I like 'adventurer!') He's just a common bully. He drinks disgustingly, and swears, and kicks people who don't get out of his way--but he's always careful to have a revolver in his pocket for fear they should hit him back!... And he makes a tremendous fuss about his white women, but when it comes to their black or brown ones ... well, anyway, _I_ think he's a brute, and we want a better class of man than _that_ for our readers!" And that was briefly why, at the "Novum," they tried to reduce armaments at home, and gave at least moral encouragement to the other side whenever there was a dust-up abroad.