Transcriber's Note:
Inconsistent hyphenation in the original document has been preserved.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.For a complete list, please see the end of this document.
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS
ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., Limited
LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.
TORONTO
"It would not be easy to say how large a part of our troublesin the present troublous times is due to the general discreditthat has overtaken the old British virtue of honesty."
The Morning Post (in a lucid interval of subjectivity),
August 28, 1920.
The substance of the following three essays was originallycontributed, in the form of independent articles to the ManchesterGuardian, the Spectator, and the Daily Telegraph respectively.They have been carefully revised, much amplified, and largelyrewritten in order to make a connected argument and avoid repetition.Footnotes of authorities have been added. My grateful acknowledgmentsare due to the Editors of the Manchester Guardian, the Spectator,and the Daily Telegraph for their kindness in permitting thisrepublication.
I confess to a feeling of shame at having to write this pamphlet atall. That reputable newspapers in this country should be seeking totransplant here the seeds of Prussian anti-Semitism, and that theyshould employ for this purpose devices so questionable and aliterature so melodramatically silly, cannot but cause a sense ofhumiliation to any self-respecting Englishman. It is for this reasonthat I have strictly limited myself to an examination of the specificcharges formulated by these publications. I cannot bring myself tobelieve that it is necessary to deal with them on a larger scale.
L.W.
Gray's Inn, London, W.C.
November, 1920.
The prodigious essay on "The Cause of World Unrest" which the MorningPost has lately published in seventeen articles and some sixtycolumns of printed matter[1] is a document on which the student ofpolitic