Long before the war the nation had been so content to be governed by phrases that [p. viii] we were actually asked to enlist for such phrases as “The rights of small nations,” “Self-determination,” and the like, whereas in very truth we were forced to fight to save our own skins. Your suggestions open up so many considerations that I cannot explore them all. But your proposition that the quality of our institutions may, after all, be sounder than the quality of the men who have failed to work them, seems especially worthy of notice. If your book serves to direct attention to the wisdom of our ancestors, it will be a great benefit to the public. Yours very truly, Willoughby de Broke. [p. ix] PREFACE. The Great War has left the world, and particularly poor old battered Europe, with many a high ideal shattered and many a respected principle destroyed. Not only the beliefs of our grandfathers, but also the convictions of our fathers, seem now old-fashioned and no longer seaworthy. Certainly an old era is dead; but has a new era been born? A new era suggests new ideals, new leading principles; it suggests a breastful of new and stout convictions. Have we of this dawning era any new ideals or principles? Have we any new and stout convictions? It seems as if we had been plunged into this new world unclothed. True enough, millions have doffed their khaki; but the citizen clothing they have donned in exchange--is it all make-believe, all eye-wash? Are we really naked? At all events, before we can possibly tell where we are, or how we stand, the most necessary preliminary step would seem to be a general stock-taking of our ideals, principles and convictions--a re-definition of the big words that once led us, and of the great phrases with which we were once inspired. Only then, only when this re-definition shall have been accomplished, does it seem possible that we shall be able to [p. x] clothe ourselves in the ideology of our new and brightly illuminated age. This book is a modest attempt at this spade work of re-definition. It does not pretend to be either exhaustive or expert. It takes up just a few of the old words and phrases, and by re-examining them in the new light, hopes rather to point the way than to cover the whole distance to the destination. Alarming sounds fill the air. There are wars and rumours of wars wherever you turn. Indeed, there are rumours abroad and at home of the worst kind of war, the cruellest and most devastating kind of war--civil war. Can it be possible that a good deal of this threat of civil war arises from the very need which this book undertakes however imperfectly to supply? Can it be possible that revolution and even Bolshevism may arise out of this need for a re-definition of terms?