or consent to think that a change of its own heart was necessary. And as the very crown and apex to that mountain of self-deception, stood the ministerial bench in Parliament. When blunders had been perpetrated and became too obvious for concealment, we might occasionally be told that to make mistakes was human, and that government did not claim immunity from the operation of that law; but ministers would dodge, and shuffle, and lie—suppress, or even falsify information to which only they had access, rather than admit that they had "done wrong," or open their eyes to the fact that what they mainly needed was a change of heart.
And as with ministers as a whole, so as a whole with people. Those elements of our national and international relations which were leading steadily on to the great conflagration wherein we were all presently to be involved, were those in which (our pride being implicated) we stubbornly denied that any change of heart was necessary. The State would not admit that its exaltation of the Will to Power over the Will to Love was morally wrong; it would not admit that the alternative came within the scope of practical politics; such teaching it left to the advocacy of the Churches; and how half-hearted that advocacy had become under pressure of the surrounding atmosphere of national self-sufficiency was revealed when the war came upon us. Christianity became almost mute; the one form of
