For this turpitude no excuse can be suggested; and of explanations there is none less discreditable than that the old electioneering hand could not resist its opportunity and that the old mob-orator played instinctively with the known and proved shortness of the public memory. The allies were not taken unawares by the idea of an armistice: for more than four years they had been declaring their war-aims and modifying them in accordance with the shifts and changes of fortune; their agreement was sealed in successive pacts; the utmost limits of what was possible in monetary payment and territorial redistribution had been assigned in the elaborate memoranda of countless experts; and, though this work of preparation was speedily abandoned in the turmoil of the Versailles conference, it should have controlled the exuberance of the prime minister's electoral campaign and saved him from the more flagrant forms of bad faith. Though he deceived others, he, a former chancellor of the exchequer, could not have deceived himself with the figures which were proposed as an estimate of German indemnities; and thirteen years' unbroken tenure of office were more than enough to teach a cabinet minister that the asylum which the Dutch government was extending to the ex-Kaiser could not be disturbed save by an unwarrantable declaration of war. All this could have been explained to the public until the fever of 1918 had abated. There was no need for a general election, and no justification has even been attempted; but the opportunity was irresistible, and the election was conducted on lines calculated to wipe all opposition out of existence. Coalition conservatives and coalition liberals consolidated their alliance by means of a system which offered to candidates the choice of unconditional surrender and of annihilation; ministers constructed their programme of peace from the hysterical savagery of their most violent supporters; and the government swept the country in triumph. It would have made little difference to the result if the independent liberal opposition had shewn the courage and justice to offer an alternative programme, though the unseated liberals might have consoled themselves with the thought that they had fallen in a struggle for honesty and moderation. Against madness so widespread not one dared to raise his voice in protest. IV