From ‘A Converted Peace-Man’, The Spectator, 28 August 1915: We have brought the present war upon ourselves in a great measure by the obstinate refusal of the great mass of English politicians to recognise that Europe is a fact, and a very momentous fact, and that to ignore it as they did was a piece of extraordinary folly. We have been cured of that folly now — by a very rough exercise of political surgery, and all that is left for us to do is to take care that we never blind our eyes in the same fashion again.