But no orders came. Instead of orders there were appeals, warnings, suggestions, assurances. The panic-monger was let loose with his paint-box of horrors. The diffident parliamentarian fell to his usual methods of soothing, and coaxing, and shaming people into doing a very vague and much-qualified thing, which he termed their duty. But there was no clearness, no firmness. An ordinary man will realise his duty so soon as he receives a definite command, and not before. He received no such command; he was lauded, lectured, and exhorted; and then was left to decide upon his course of action by the light of his own reason and conscience.[7] He was not even given a plain statement of the {375} true facts of the situation, and then left at peace to determine what he would do. He was disturbed in his meditations by shouting--more shouting--ever louder and louder shouting--through some thousands of megaphones. The nature of the appeal was emotional, confusing, frenzied, and at times degrading. Naturally the results were in many directions most unsatisfactory, unbusinesslike, and disorderly. The drain of recruiting affected industries and individuals not only unequally and unfairly, but in a way contrary to the public interest. If Government will not exercise guidance and control in unprecedented circumstances, it is inevitable that the country must suffer. [Sidenote: AN ORGIE OF SENSATIONALISM] To judge from the placards and the posters, the pictures and the language, a casual stranger would not have judged that the British Empire stood at the crisis of its fate; but rather that some World's Fair was arriving shortly, and that these were the preliminary flourishes. Lord Kitchener cannot have enjoyed the pre-eminence which was allotted to him in our mural decorations, and which suggested that he was some kind of co-equal with the famous Barnum or Lord George Sanger. Probably no one alive hated the whole of this orgie of vulgar sensationalism, which the timidity of the politicians had forced upon the country, more than he did.[8] {376} Having stirred up good and true men to join the New Army, whether it was rightly their turn or not; having got at others in whom the voluntary spirit burned less brightly, by urging their employers to dismiss them and their sweethearts to throw them over if they refused the call of duty, the 'publicity artists' and the 'party managers' between them undoubtedly collected for Lord Kitchener a very fine army, possibly the finest raw material for an army which has ever been got together. And Lord Kitchener, thereupon, set to work, and trained this army as no one but Lord Kitchener could have trained it. These results were a source of great pride and self-congratulation among the politicians. The voluntary principle--you see how it works! What a triumph! What other nation could have done the same?