Britons who understood that we are actually engaged in a struggle for our very existence should seriously jeopardise and delay, through a miserable industrial squabble, the supply of war material upon which the safety of our Empire might depend. The strike on the Clyde was, to me, the most evil symptom of apathy and lack of all patriotic instincts which the war has brought forth; it was, to my mind, proof conclusive that a section at least of our working-classes are entirely dead to the great national impulse by which, in the past, the British people have been so profoundly swayed. Is the Government doing enough to rekindle those impulses? Has it taken the people fully and frankly into its confidence? Above all, has it made it sufficiently clear to the masses that we are not getting the men we need, and that unless those men come forward voluntarily, some method of compulsory selection will become inevitable?
No, it has not!
We come back to the question in which, I am firmly convinced, lies the solution of many of our present difficulties—are we being told the truth about the war? Has the nation had the clear, ringing call to action that, unquestionably, it needs?
No, it has not!
I shall try to show, in the pages of this modest work, that the country has not been given the information to which it is plainly entitled respecting the actual military operations which have been accomplished. It is certainly not too much to say that the country has not been really definitely and clearly informed as to the measure of the effort it will be called upon to make in the future. I am not in the secrets of the War Office, and it is impossible to say what the policy of the Government
