Or was their sacrifice rejected, were their early ideals betrayed by a government which cared too little about everything to see clearly about anything? Two and a half years of war achieved a series of contrasts so violent that a man might well rub his eyes and wonder whether he was in the same country. Great Britain, at least by the letter of her professions, had entered the war disinterestedly to uphold the neutrality of Belgium and to pay a debt of honour to France; she had since surrendered so completely to the acquisitive side of imperialism that she was collecting vast tracts of territory in Asia, Africa and the Pacific, promising Constantinople to Russia, Trieste and the Trentino to Italy--the former ally of Austria--and Alsace-Lorraine to France. In 1914 the prime minister had stirred the world with the eloquence of his plea for the small nationalities, but the stress of war induced him, with colleagues, supporters and opponents bleating joyous acquiescence, to suspend the home rule act which promised independence to at least one small nationality. In an England lately taught to loathe militarism and autocracy, the life and liberty of the subject lay so much at the mercy of autocratic regulations that criticism was stifled. Conscription had been imposed, with every kind of base capitulation, first to the incompetence of the War Office, then to the urgency of the press, then to sectional rivalries between married and unmarried men. The rights of minorities and the pleadings of conscience were left to assert themselves within the four walls of a prison-cell. And hardly a voice had been raised in protest. When they found that the policy of the cabinet was committing tens of millions, without their knowledge, to war, a handful of ministers did indeed resign, with less commotion than a man would cause in leaving a table where the cards were marked; but of the others who had raved and argued for non-intervention all were snugly ensconced in office. The major complaisance made easy the minor; and the party which had left its principles on the threshold before drifting into war drifted into conscription without realising that it had any more principles to abandon. Sir John Simon, who had stood forth as the champion of the voluntary system, argued half-heartedly from the standpoint of expediency and resigned when his political influence had evaporated. And yet this servility to the dictates of government was not the result of a splendid resolve to close the ranks and to support the ministry in its hour of crisis: there was no union of hearts comparable with that effected between the republicans and the democrats in America. The united front at home broke down after the battle of Neuve Chapelle; and from May 1915 till December 1916 there was such an orgy of political intrigue as Great Britain had not seen in living memory.