The Spectator

From ‘The Objections to State Control’, The Spectator, 17 April 1915: As our readers know, we hate State ownership of industries, because in our opinion it is inefficient, and tends to low product; but in this particular case we cannot be expected to regard this as a disadvantage. The "Government stroke" in the matter of selling beer and other light intoxicants will suit us exactly. A witty Frenchman declared that it was the ideal of every State functionary to get at the top of a narrow passage and shout out : "On ne passe pas!" We should not break our hearts if that were to be the attitude adopted in front of the beer-barrel. Another and more serious objection is that which is threatened by the most advanced section of the Temperance Party.

From ‘Some reflections of an alien enemy: the contradiction between being and feeling an Englishman, by a Czech’, The Spectator, 17 April 1915: What I most regret having lost is my previous unawareness of there being any difference between me and Englishmen. In saying we, I used to mean we English people; somehow or other I find myself now compelled to distinguish between me, a foreigner, and you, English people. Quite proper that it should be so; yet at the same time I feel as though I had lost my birthright. The disappearance of my instinctive sense of identity with my fellow-men, qnite irrespective of their nationality, fills me with sadness. An invisible, yet for all that quite tangible, barrier seems to have arisen around me.

From ‘The Pope and the War’, The Spectator, 17 April 1915: The result of the war may prove that motives which we had supposed to be secured by Christianity are after all to be of little account in directing human actions. That is the situation stated without exaggeration. And in the world in which this gigantic crisis is about to be decided there is a spiritual Power which claims infallibility in any judgment it may choose to deliver ex cathedra on matters of faith or morals. We say nothing about faith, but surely if ever there were a plain occasion for moral direction and moral judgment this war provides one.