Today’s papers record the death of Edward Vaillant, one of the last of the old French revolutionary heroes. Until the present war I esteemed him as one of the invincible so far as socialist principles are concerned. But no one fell more sadly than he at the end. When he attended the conference of the Socialist Sections of the allied countries in London last February, he was, as Hardie remarked to me, “maniacal in his patriotism.”

20 December 1915. Diary entry of John Bruce Glasier, socialist and pacifist [Glasier Papers GP2/1/22]. This week’s war: 73.