Aug. 4.
WueEn war befell us six years ago to-day it did something more than merely to set a whole nation in arms to redeem its plighted word. That the nation did take so readily and promptly to war, for the sake of a treaty that we would not regard as a scrap of paper, is a matter which will always be a source of legitimate pride, but that is a theme on which we need not enlarge at this time of day. Rather may we regard with possibly both pleasure and profit an aspect of the nation's character which that momentous day in August awoke into life. If it were true that we were a people of shopkeeping instincts, the advent of war promptly changed them into something else; or perhaps it would be truer to say that it disclosed the real type of character whicl the aforesaid shopkeeping practices had disguised, One thing we did not attempt to do during the war, in spite of all the remarkable things achieved. It was left to the Germans to try a really sens: tional and theatrical coup, the conversion of the struggle into a holy war. At any time it would have been too dramatic for our liking, and as matters were our hard-won knowledge of the world, would never have allowed us to take so fatal a step. This holy war, which failed of realization, is one of the most interesting phases of the great conflict, and discloses the British civilian, the one who wandered at large over the spacious places of the earth, in the light of his real greatness. The success of a holy war depended in one respect on how far the Germans had worked up the artificial Pan-Islam movement which had been started some years before. In combating these intrigues all through Arabia we find the British civilian, the man who through liking or force of circumstances had made a study of tribes and conditions, working hand in hand with officials, sailors and soldiers, and achieving the most amazing results. The story of this phase of the war is coming to us piecemeal, but it is of an extreme fascination, We supplied arms to tribes who again and again sold them to our enemies, but finally when it came to the crucial moment these people did what was needed of
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.