“Trust in the people” should be a habit of mind—­a rule of action tacitly adopted—­not a party watchword.  Tell a man or boy—­more than once—­that you trust him, and he will probably take it—­and not without a warrant—­that you don’t, that in fact you have grave doubts but do not wholly despair.  The phrase might be taboo on the platform to raise cheap cheers but silently recognised in the Cabinet as a guide in action.  How much better would it have been all through the War, and how much better now, if there were no concealment, except when information given might assist the enemy, if we knew at once even when things went wrong!  There have been times when it was necessary, in order to know at all what was really going on, to read the German reports rather than our own, subject of course to a discount.  The difficulty with those German preparations is to determine whether the discount for intentional falsification should be 5 per cent. or 90 per cent.  Candour, however, leads us rather to admit the former as generally nearer the mark when military operations have been the subject of them, at least until the Germans began to suffer serious defeats in the field.

It would have been far better, too, to have assumed—­there was real ground for the assumption—­that the nation was ready and willing at once to make any sacrifice, to submit to privation, to rouse itself to any effort if only the necessity for it were made clear, and if it could be satisfied that so far as possible the burdens would be distributed equally among all.

Increased taxation properly adjusted has almost been a general demand, but unfairness in its incidence even on comparatively small matters is intensely resented.  The Food Control Ministry whose orders affect everybody’s daily comfort is positively popular, while the profiteer and the food-hoarder arouse the bitterest, though perhaps not always discriminating, indignation.  Skilled workmen have been almost driven to strike, not from want of patriotism, nor from desire for profit out of the War, but because of the unfairness of leaving their wage at a level often below that of the unskilled and even of casual importations.  The fatal delays which were sometimes quite unnecessary, in dealing with complaints have added to the feeling of unrest.  Suspicions were even aroused sometimes that delays were intentional.

A like spirit of confidence is required in the statement of “War Aims.”  The higher our aims are put—­if put honestly—­the more earnest and complete is the response.  Stated as they were by Mr. Asquith, with his usual masterly precision of language, they received a practically unanimous and enthusiastic approval.  There was nothing sordid in the motives which induced the best of our youth to offer their lives for their country’s cause.