This pseudo-philosophy arises from my having read Arnold Bennett's article in to-day's _Daily News_, and also from a perusal of Hudson's "Herbert Spencer." Bennett is just an idealist, but in dealing with those cruel realities of which I have spoken, he seems to me a child. Any attempt to dissociate the acts of the German Government from the views of the German people--in other words to assume that a great part of the latter want peace--is absurd. Look at France in 1870. When the Second Empire was overthrown and the Third Republic set up in its place, did the Republicans seek peace? No, they proceeded to prosecute the war to the utmost and tried to drive the invader off the soil of France. And even if in this war a succession of defeats should overthrow the German Kaiser and his Government, do you think the Germans would submit forthwith, and throw themselves on the mercy of the Allies? No, they will fight to the last man, woman and child to prevent the Rhine being crossed. So we should realise that, for our own safety's sake, we must reduce the German military forces to a position of helplessness--in fact, utterly destroy them, if we are to have any settlement. It is Germany or ourselves; and till one or the other is up or down, the war will go on. To crush the Germans we must put every ounce into the struggle. Are we doing so? I cannot think it when I see Parliament taking such a disgraceful line on the question of drink. Small wonder that Lloyd George exclaims, "What an ignoble spectacle the House of Commons presents now!" I had thought the British Parliament to be a great and potent institution. Now I think it is a convocation of old apple women. What we want is a Cromwell or a Napoleon to knock together the heads of political parties and declare, "No more drink." What will history say when it is recorded that in the midst of this great struggle the British people refused to give up the drink that was poisoning their lives and hindering the work of the nation, and that the influence of a few brewers and capitalists was sufficient to prevent any serious reform being passed in that House which is supposed to be the people's representative? As for the recent anti-German riots, they seem to me to have been organised by those slack loafing elements of the population who lounge about refusing to enlist. Still, I suppose this is a necessary product of our type of national civilisation. Yet that system--the English or insular, I call it--has done, as it will do, marvels. So perhaps all is for the best, but I am grieved beyond measure at the collapse of L. G.'s scheme for drastic treatment of the drink evil. He at least is a man.