in 1916, that peace by negotiation is preferable to peace by victory in the field, because of the human cost that victory entails, has he no obligation to his fellow-citizens who are paying that cost with their lives? It is evident from our experience that to limit the expression of opinion in wartime to opinion which does not hinder its prosecution is, in fact, to give the executive an entirely free hand, whatever its policy, and to assume that, while the armies are in the field, an absolute moral moratorium is imperative. That is, surely, a quite impossible position. No one who has watched at all carefully the process of governance in time of war can doubt that criticism was never more necessary. Its limitation is, in fact, an assurance that the unity of outlook is a guarantee that mistakes will be made and wrong done. For once the right to criticize is withdrawn, the executive commits all the natural follies of dictatorship. It assumes a semi-divine character for its acts. It deprives the people of information essential to a proper judgment of its policy. It misrepresents the situation it confronts by that art of propaganda which, as Mr Cornford has happily said, enables it to deceive its friends without deceiving its enemies. A people in wartime is always blind to the facts of its position and anxious to believe only agreeable news; the government takes care to provide it only with news that is pleasant. If no such news is at hand it will be manufactured. Petty successes will be magnified into resounding victories; defeats will be minimized, wherever possible. The agony of the troops will be obscured by the clouds of censorship. A wartime government is always obtuse to suggestion, angry when inquiry is suggested, careless of truth. It can, in fact, only be moralized to the degree to which it is subject to critical examination in every aspect of its policy. And to penalize, therefore, the critic is not only to poison the moral foundations of the state, but to make it extremely difficult, when peace comes, for both government and the mass of citizens to resume the habits of normal decency.