being delivered during the war and now first collected by 1918...

MIGHT IS RIGHT   First published as one of the Oxford Pamphlets,   October 1914. THE WAR OF IDEAS   An Address to the Royal Colonial Institute,   December 12, 1916. THE FAITH OF ENGLAND   An Address to the Union Society of University   College, London, March 22, 1917. SOME GAINS OF THE WAR   An Address to the Royal Colonial Institute,   February 13, 1918. THE WAR AND THE PRESS   A Paper read to the Essay Society, Eton College,   March 14, 1918. SHAKESPEARE AND ENGLAND   The Annual Shakespeare Le

This book was not planned, but grew out of the troubles of the time. When, on one occasion or another, I was invited to lecture, I did not find, with Milton's Satan, that the mind is its own place; I could speak only of what I was thinking of, and my mind was fixed on the War. I am unacquainted with military science, so my treatment of the War was limited to an estimate of the characters of the antagonists. The character of Germany and the Germans is a riddle. I have seen no convincing solution

First published as one of the Oxford Pamphlets, October 1914 It is now recognized in England that our enemy in this war is not a tyrant military caste, but the united people of modern Germany. We have to combat an armed doctrine which is virtually the creed of all Germany. Saxony and Bavaria, it is true, would never have invented the doctrine; but they have accepted it from Prussia, and they believe it. The Prussian doctrine has paid the German people handsomely; it has given them their place in

An Address to the Royal Colonial Institute, December 12, 1916 I hold, as I daresay you do, that we are at a crisis of our history where there is not much room for talk. The time when this struggle might have been averted or won by talk is long past. During the hundred years before the war we have not talked much, or listened much, to the Germans. For fifty of those years at least the head of waters that has now been let loose in a devastating flood over Europe was steadily accumulating; but we p

An Address to the Union Society of University College, London, March 22,1917 When Professor W.P. Ker asked me to address you on this ceremonial occasion I felt none of the confidence of the man who knows what he wants to say, and is looking for an audience. But Professor Ker is my old friend, and this place is the place where I picked up many of those fragmentary impressions which I suppose must be called my education. So I thought it would be ungrateful to refuse, even though it should prove th

An Address to the Royal Colonial Institute, February 13, 1918 Our losses in this War continue to be enormous, and we are not yet near to the end. So it may seem absurd to speak of our gains, of gains that we have already achieved. But if you will look at the thing in a large light, I think you will see that it is not absurd. I do not speak of gains of territory, and prisoners, and booty. It is true that we have taken from the Germans about a million square miles of land in Africa, where land is

A paper read to the Essay Society, Eton College, March 14, 1918. When you asked me to read or speak to you, I promised to speak about the War. What I have to say is wholly orthodox, but it is none the worse for that. Indeed, when I think how entirely the War possesses our thoughts and how entirely we are agreed concerning it, I seem to see a new meaning in the creeds of the religions. These creeds grew up by general consent, and no one who believed them grudged repeating them. In the face of an

Annual Shakespeare Lecture of the British Academy, delivered July 4, 1918 There is nothing new and important to be said of Shakespeare. In recent years antiquaries have made some additions to our knowledge of the facts of his life. These additions are all tantalizing and comparatively insignificant. The history of the publication of his works has also become clearer and more intelligible, especially by the labours of Mr. Pollard; but the whole question of quartos and folios remains thorny and di