The present war, as many of us thought, and still think, was not inevitable. None have maintained this opinion in the past with greater vehemence than the Liberal party. But the conditions on which it could have been avoided were, that England should have been prepared, which she was not; and that she should have spoken her intentions clearly, which she did not. [Sidenote: THE PRICE PAID] When the war is ended, or when the tide of it has turned and begun to sweep eastward, there will be much coming and going of the older people, and of women, both young and old, between England and France. They have waited, and what is it that they will then be setting forth to see? ... From Mons to the Marne, and back again to Ypres, heaps of earth, big and little, shapeless, nameless, numberless--the graves of men who did not hesitate to sacrifice either their careers or their lives when duty called them. Desolation is the heaviest sacrifice of all; and those who will, by and by, go on this pilgrimage have suffered it, ungrudgingly and with pride, because their country needed it. If this war was {305} indeed inevitable there is no more to be said. But what if it was not inevitable? What if there would have been no war at all--or a less lingering and murderous war--supposing that those, who from the trust reposed in them by their fellow-countrymen should have been the first to sacrifice their careers to duty, had not chosen instead to sacrifice duty to their careers? It was no doubt a service to humanity to save the careers of politicians from extinction, to keep ministers in office from year to year, to preserve the Liberal party--that great instrument for good--unfractured. These benefits were worth a great price; but were they worth quite so great a price as has been paid? [1] The Editor of the _Westminster Gazette_ should be an unimpeachable witness: "The (German) Emperor's visit to Tangier (March 1905) was followed by a highly perilous passage of diplomacy, in which the German Government appeared to be taking risks out of all proportion to any interest they could have had in Morocco. The French sacrificed their Foreign Minister (M. Delcasse) in order to keep the peace, but the Germans were not appeased, and the pressure continued. It was the general belief at this time, that nothing but the support which the British government gave to the French averted a catastrophe in the early part of 1906, or induced the Germans to accept the Algeciras conference as the way out of a dangerous situation."--_The Foundations of British Policy_ (p. 15), by J. A. Spender. [2] The Cawdor Programme.