A democracy, which, for its own defence, has deprived itself of free speech is a dangerous paradox. The position is not merely abnormal; it is so abnormal that the path of return to normality is to the average citizen unimaginable. Since war is the supplanting of reason by violence it is natural that it should swallow up Liberalism which is precisely the opposite. All values are turned inside out. Killing becomes a solemn duty. Lying is holy on condition that it deceives the enemy to his death. Men must approve their manhood by handing themselves over soul and body to others, their military superiors. Criticism, and the individual mind, accept engulfment in a world of patterned conduct, salutes, absolutism. All that corruption of the essence of life comes with war as its inseparable shadow, and the rankness of the Prussian offence is not merely to have foregone honour, and broken treaties and sown untimely death throughout the world, but also to have compelled civilisation to debase itself in order to preserve itself. So, at least, must it strike a Liberal. We have bowed to the whole process of retrogression imposed on us. With bitterness of spirit we have seen unnecessary arbitrariness added to what was necessary, added by methods as contemptible as were ever used in furtherance of the old political and economic tyrannies before the war. Now we have the right to call a halt. The rich, reckless clamourers who in these days are almost the monopolists of free speech have already achieved some deterioration of the ideal for which the people of the Allied countries took up the challenge of war. We may assume that the Allied Governments are better custodians of the democratic faith, but there is always danger, in times of stress, from those whom one may call the terrorists of “patriotism.” Protest has become an obligation. Nobody who has watched latest developments can fail to be alarmed by their manifest tendency. That tendency may be summarised in one ignoble sentence. An attempt is being made to transform what began as a war for honour into a war for trade. Powerful intriguers of unbounded assurance are sedulous behind the backs of the fighting men, scheming to run up new flags in the place of the old. The inscription “Justice” is to be hauled down, and “Markets” is to be hoisted in its stead. In pursuance of that new object the powerful innovators are ready to extend far beyond their natural term the torture and agony which are now the sole realities of Europe. They are willing, for the accomplishment of it, to ordain that the blood of better men shall drip indefinitely into the cistern of Gehenna. And since it is the bellowers and gamblers at home and not the silent trench-fellows of death at the front that exercise most influence on national policy, it is to be feared that the former may prevail. Assuredly protest is a matter of obligation.