And what of the Pacificists?  Where are they?  Some, I know, are in prison, but, if it had not been for the rapid change of parts which the war has brought, they would have had a good many more fellow-captives than they have.  The writer of this article was, from his first entrance into public affairs, a Pacificist to the backbone.  He believed that war was the greatest of preventible evils, and that no war which had occurred in his lifetime had been justified by the laws of right and wrong.  To-day that Pacificist is heart and soul with his countrymen in their struggle; and, having lived to see England engaged in a righteous war, he has changed his motto from “Rub lightly” to “Mak sicker.”

Not less remarkable is the transformation of the liberty-lovers (among whom also the present writer has always reckoned himself).  Four years ago we were eagerly and rightly on the alert to detect the slightest attempt by Ministers or bureaucrats or public bodies to invade our glorious privilege of doing and saying exactly what we like.  To-day the pressure of the war has turned us into the willing subjects of a despotism.  We tumble over each other in our haste to throwaway the liberties which we used to consider vital to our being; and some of us have been not merely the victims, but the active agents, of an administrative system which we believe to be necessary for the safety of the State.

But is there not a remnant?  Have all the lovers of Liberty changed their garb and conned new parts?  Not all.  A remnant there is, and it is to be found in the House of Lords.  This is perhaps the most astonishing feature of the “humorous stage”; and if, among superlatives, a super-superlative is possible, I reserve that epithet for the fact that the most vigorous champion of personal freedom in the House of Lords has been an ecclesiastical lawyer.  From Lord Stowell to Lord Parmoor is indeed a far cry.  Who could have dreamt that, even amid the upheaval of a world, a spokesman of liberty and conscience would emerge from the iron-bound precincts of the Consistory Court and the Vicar-General’s Office?

Bishops again—­not even these most securely placed of all British officials can escape the tendency to change which pervades the whole stage of public life.  The Bishop of Winchester, whom all good Progressives used to denounce as a dark conspirator against the rights of conscience; the Bishop of Oxford, whom we were taught to regard as a Hildebrand and a Torquemada rolled into one—­these admirable prelates emerge from the safe seclusion of Castle and Palace to rebuke the persecution of the Conscientious Objector, even when his objection is “nearly intolerable.”