But the question, Were we prepared for the war? involves deeper and more spiritual issues than this. What manner of men were we when that sudden strain was put upon our moral fibre? That is what posterity will want to know. And first of all, let me say that it is of England, not of the other belligerents, that I intend to speak. After all, on the admission of her enemies and even of her allies, it was she who bore the brunt of the conflict. Going into it with less, I suppose, of religious inspiration than France, with a Government less efficient, because less autocratic, than that of the United States, and with material resources not capable of competing with those of Brazil, she has achieved such a measure of victory as is indicated by the fact that her war indemnity, if it is ever paid, will amount to little less than a tenth of her war debt. It is not, then, simply because England is my own country, and because, a stay-at-home by nature, I have little inside information about other peoples, but because it was upon Great Britain that, in those fateful three years, the eyes of the world were centred, that I confine myself in this chapter to a survey of English conditions and English ideals. “Show me,” that great philanthropist Peterson used to say, “how the poor of a nation live, and I will tell you whether that nation is alive.” In this respect, it must be confessed, the record of England at that time was indeed a black one. Huddled together in slums and rookeries, whose “model” flats often had to contain two families where only one could live with comfort, the poor were stifled from the first by overcrowding. It must be remembered that the poorer classes had, as usual, larger families than the rich, and it was no uncommon thing to find four or five children living in the same tenement with their parents. Many of these poor little mites got no more than a fortnight’s holiday at the seaside every year, and had nowhere to play in except the public parks. In return for their school attendance they were paid a mere pittance, and only the simplest possible fare was provided for them by the school authorities. It was piteous, as one moved about the poorer parts of London, to see their untidy hair, their crumpled collars and dirty handkerchiefs. Small wonder that disease spread quickly in such surroundings, and it was estimated that child-mortality in the poorer quarters of the large towns was fully one in a thousand. For a time, of course, the influence of the school kept them out of harm’s way, but at seventeen or eighteen, just at the most impressionable period of life, their schooling must perforce come to an end, and, hardly more than boys, they were thrust out into the world to shift for themselves. Often, of course, drink or gambling would be responsible for the worst cases of poverty; but often, too, it would be mere ill-luck or imprudent under-insurance that left them stranded when they were out of work. Too