There is also a further question--did the country, reading these various advertisements and placards--heroic, melodramatic, pathetic, and facetious--did the country form a true conception of the gravity of the position? Was it not in many cases confused and perplexed by the nature of the appeal? Did not many people conclude, that things could not really be so very serious, if those in authority resorted to such flamboyant and sensational methods--methods so conspicuously lacking in dignity, so inconsistent with all previous ideas of the majesty of Government in times of national peril? The method itself, no doubt, was only unfamiliar in so far as it used the King's name. It was familiar and common enough in other connections. But a method which might have been unexceptionable for calling attention to the virtues of a shop, a soap, a {370} circus, or a pill, seemed inappropriate in the case of a great nation struggling at the crisis of its fate.[4] Each of us must judge from his own experience of the effect produced. The writer has heard harsher things said of these appeals by the poor, than by the well-to-do. The simplest and least sophisticated minds are often the severest critics in matters of taste as well as morals. And this was a matter of both. Among townspeople as well as countryfolk there were many who--whether they believed or disbelieved in the urgent need, whether they responded to the appeal or did not respond to it--regarded the whole of this 'publicity' campaign with distrust and dislike, as a thing which demoralised the country, which was revolting to its honour and conscience, and in which the King's name ought never to have been used.[5] {371} [Sidenote: ON THE WORKING CLASSES] On the part of the working-classes there were other objections to the methods employed. They resented the hints and instructions which were so obligingly given by the 'publicity artists' and the 'party managers' to the well-to-do classes--to employers of all sorts--as to how they should bring pressure to bear upon their dependents. And they resented--especially the older men and those with family responsibilities--the manner in which they were invited by means of circulars to signify their willingness to serve--as they imagined in the last dire necessity--and when they had agreed patriotically to do so, found themselves shortly afterwards called upon to fulfil their contract. For they knew that in the neighbouring village--or in the very next house--there were men much more eligible for military {372} service in point of age and freedom from family responsibilities, who, not having either volunteered, or filled up the circular, were accordingly left undisturbed to go about their daily business.[6]