My French and Italian are only for very rough common jobs; when it came to explaining the Conscientious Objector sympathetically they broke down badly. I had to construct long parenthetical explanations of our antiquated legislative methods to show how it was that the “conscientious objector” had been so badly defined. The foreigner does not understand the importance of vague definition in British life. “Practically, of course, we offered to exempt anyone who conscientiously objected to fight or serve. Then the Pacifist and German people started a campaign to enrol objectors. Of course every shirker, every coward and slacker in the country decided at once to be a conscientious objector. Anyone but a British legislator could have foreseen that. Then we started Tribunals to wrangle with the objectors about their _bona fides._ Then the Pacifists and the Pro-Germans issued little leaflets and started correspondence courses to teach people exactly how to lie to the Tribunals. Trouble about freedom of the pamphleteer followed. I had to admit--it has been rather a sloppy business. The people who made the law knew their own minds, but we English are not an expressive people.” These are not easy things to say in Elementary (and slightly Decayed) French or in Elementary and Corrupt Italian. “But why do people support the sham conscientious objector and issue leaflets to help him--when there is so much big work clamouring to be done?” “That,” I said, “is the Whig tradition.” When they pressed me further, I said: “I am really the questioner. I am visiting _your_ country, and you have to tell _me_ things. It is not right that I should do all the telling. Tell me all about Romain Rolland.” And so I pressed them about the official socialists in Italy and the Socialist minority in France until I got the question out of the net of national comparisons and upon a broader footing. In several conversations we began to work out in general terms the psychology of those people who were against the war. But usually we could not get to that; my interlocutors would insist upon telling me just what they would like to do or just what they would like to see done to stop-the-war pacifists and conscientious objectors; pleasant rather than fruitful imaginative exercises from which I could effect no more than platitudinous uplifts.