An article in the Atlantic Monthly for October by Mr. Arthur Bullardhas set me thinking. It was hard to classify. It was not exactlypro-German. Most of its general sentiments were unexceptionable. It didnot seem to be written in bad faith. Yet it was full of sneers andaccusations against Great Britain which almost any candid reader, whoknew the facts, must see to be unfair. I did not know what to make ofMr. Bullard till at last there came across my mind an old description ofa certain type, the second-best type, of legendary Scotch minister: "Indoctrine not vara ootstanding, but a Deevil on the moralities!"
Mr. Bullard's general doctrine is fair enough. There have been two typesof foreign policy in Great Britain, one typified, if you like, by LordNorth or Castlereagh or Disraeli, a type which concentrated on itscountry's interests and accepted the ordinary diplomatic traditions ofold-world Europe; the other typified by Fox, Gladstone,Campbell-Bannerman, Bryce, which set before itself an ideal ofrighteousness and even of unselfishness in international politics. Bothparties made their mistakes; but on the whole the Liberal movement inBritish foreign[Pg 2] policy is generally felt to point in the rightdirection, and its record forms certainly a glorious page in the generalhistory of civilization. Mr. Bullard, speaking as an enlightenedAmerican, is prepared to befriend, or at least to praise, Great Britainif she walks in Liberal paths, but intends to denounce her if shefollows after Lord North. For example: he denounces the policy of theBoer War, but he praises warmly the settlement which followed it in 1906under the guidance of Campbell-Bannerman, Asquith, and Sir Edward Grey."The granting of self-government to the defeated Boers will always rankas one of the finest achievements in political history." This is allsound Liberalism, and I accept every word of it.
There is nothing peculiar, then, about Mr. Bullard's doctrine; it isonly when he applies it that one discovers his true "deevilishness onthe moralities." His method is to ask at once more than human nature canbe expected to give, and then pour out a whole commination service ofanathemas when his demands are not complied with. He begins, as it were,by saying that all he expects of Mr. X—— in order to love him iscommon honesty and truthfulness: we all agree and are edified. Then itappears that Mr. X—— once said he was out when he was really at homeand busy. The scoundrel! A convicted liar, a man who has used theGod-given privilege of speech for the darkening of[Pg 3] knowledge! How canMr. Bullard possibly be friends with such a man?
To take one small but significant point first. Mr. Bullard, like mostpeople, sees the need of continuity in foreign policy, and the great