Even after more than a year of war there are still visible symptoms, which seem to indicate that some sections of the community are not as yet fully alive to the importance of all the issues at stake in the present contest. Nevertheless, broadly speaking, it may be said that the British public have at last woken up from the deep lethargy in which they were steeped before the war. However slow the mass of the people of this country may be to grasp any new general idea with which they are unfamiliar, they experienced no difficulty in understanding what “militarism” meant, or what was the significance of “frightfulness.”

September 1915. Extract from Pan-Germanism by the Earl of Cromer, reprinted from the Spectator, September 1915. [Special Collections SPEC S/D525 (P.C.121)]