We need hardly say that the German Emperor has every
right in the world to insist on the necessity of self-defence. But what we cannot understand is that, when the Emperor is so continually preaching the need of maintaining great armed forces as an essential part of the national policy, many Radicals in this country should go on talking as though only a lack of goodwill prevented the British Government from coming to an understanding with Germany for the reduction of armaments. We welcome in last week's Nation a letter signed "Reformer" in which the writer, who declares himself to be a Radical Englishman, asks : "Is it not time that our party learnt the main facts with regard to our relations with Germany?" lie adds: "The facts of International politics are not to be learnt by a reference to our inner consciousness. Unless we learn and apply the lessons of history, our programme of social reform will perish with the destruction of the nation." That is surely bare common-sense. To assume unfalteringly that Germany is ready to do something that she has repeatedly declared she is unwilling to do argues a state of mind which, anywhere outside the region of politics, would suggest the need for calling in the services of an expert in mental alienation.
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