Page:Britain's Deadly Peril.djvu/151

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THE PERIL OF INVASION
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because they have learnt wisdom by experience, now realise their error. They see how utterly foolish they were to jeer at my warnings in the Daily Mail; and by singing in the music halls "Are we Down'earted—No!" they have gallantly admitted it—as every Britisher admits where he is wrong—and have come forward to stem the tide of barbarians who threaten us.

As one who has done all that mortal man can do to try to bring home to his country a sense of its own danger, and who, by the insidious action of "those in power," narrowly escaped financial ruin for daring to be a patriot, I cast the past aside and rejoice in the fine spirit of the younger generation of men, actuated by the fact that they are still Britons.

But, after this war, there will be men—men whose names are to-day as household words—who must be indicted before the nation for leading us into the trap which Germany so cunningly prepared for us. Those are men who knew, by the Kaiser's declaration in 1908, what was intended, and while posing as British statesmen—save the mark!—lied to the public, and told them that Germany was our best friend, and that war would never be declared—"not in our time."

There will be a day, ere long, when the pro-German section of what Britons foolishly call their "rulers"—certain members of that administration who are now struggling to atone for their past follies in being misled by the cunning of the enemy—will be arraigned and swept out of the public ken, as they deserve to be. The blood of a million mothers of sons in Great Britain boils at thoughts of the ghastly truth, and the wholesale sacrifice of their dear ones, because the diplomacy of Great Britain, with all