The socialization or nationalization of production and distribution and the extinction of what is called Capitalism—by whatever name the ideal, and t… - H. H. Asquith

In 1851 Harriet Martineau had just published a...History of England during the Thirty Years' Peace. The Great Exhibition of 1851...was about to open its doors and inaugurate what many people regarded as a new era of international concord. Industry was to be the recruiting sergeant of the future, and war, with its unproductive expenditure, with its futile hatreds and animosities, was to be superseded by the bloodless revolution of free competitors in the open markets of the world. For success in that new and pacific international struggle no nation was so well equipped as our own. We started with enormous advantages. Fifty years had passed. How did we stand to-day? The civilized world, which in 1851 seemed to be in the mood to send in its swords to be beaten into ploughshares, was now transformed into an armed camp; the 30 years' peace which Miss Martineau described had been succeeded by 50 years of almost continuous war.

If I am asked what we are fighting for I reply in two sentences. In the first place, to fulfil a solemn international obligation, an obligation which, if it had been entered into between private persons in the ordinary concerns of life, would have been regarded as an obligation not only of law but of honour, which no self-respecting man could possibly have repudiated. I say, secondly, we are fighting to vindicate the principle which, in these days when force, material force, sometimes seems to be the dominant influence and factor in the development of mankind, we are fighting to vindicate the principle that small nationalities are not to be crushed, in defiance of international good faith, by the arbitrary will of a strong and overmastering Power. I do not believe any nation ever entered into a great controversy—and this is one of the greatest history will ever know—with a clearer conscience and a stronger conviction that it is fighting, not for aggression, not for the maintenance even of its own selfish interest, but that it is fighting in defence of principles the maintenance of which is vital to the civilisation of the world.

It is said, however, that this is not an ordinary case of the transfer of power from one party to another. It means, for the first time, the installation of a Socialist Government in the seats of the mighty. Few people who have not had the melancholy privilege of reading my postbag for the last month will realise what this prospect means to a large and by no means negligible mass of our fellow subjects. I have had a very large experience of the vagaries of postal correspondence. I have never come across more virulent manifestations of an epidemic of political hysteria... I have been in turn, during these weeks, cajoled, wheedled, almost caressed, taunted, threatened, brow-beaten, and all but blackmailed to step in as the "saviour of society."