What we’re fighting for

From ‘Justice and Security’, The Spectator, 26 February 1916: If the conditions upon which we are willing to make peace are to be summarised, they cannot be summarised better than by the words Justice and Security. It is for these that we and our Allies are fighting. These are the signs in which we shall win. We do not believe, and never have believed, in the talk about the nation coming out of the war ruined and crippled, and with no capacity left in us to rebuild our civilisation. On the contrary, we are convinced that when the war is over the nation will go forward with renewed energy, not only on the moral and intellectual but on the economic plane. When the storm is past we shall find that not only do the oak-tree’s roots hold as firmly as ever, but that not a healthy branch has been lost, though, to our advantage, some rotten ones may have been carried away by the gale… We are not only awake, but, what is quite as important, we realise the dangers from which we have escaped.