It would have been an unspeakable crime to divide the nation when even united it could barely be saved from defeat, so formidable was the foe we had … - David Lloyd George

The time has come for Liberalism to resume the leadership of progress—to lead away the masses from the chimeras of Karl Marx and the nightmares of Lenin, and to carry on the great task to which Gladstone and Bright devoted their noble lives.

The Labour Party is being run by the extreme pacifist, Bolshevist group... What they really believed in was Bolshevism... I named one or two of them—Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, Mr. Snowden, Mr. Smillie, and others... [S]upposing they had had their way? (Cries of "Ah!") What would have happened? (A voice:—"We should have lost the war.") Belgium would have been overrun, France would have been overrun, Germany now would have had the whole Continent of Europe right under its cruel heel, the Channel ports would have been in the hands of the Germans...we should have been the slaves and the bondmen of Germany if we had listened to these men—and they are the real Labour Party at the present moment... I venture to say it would not be safe to entrust the destinies of a great Empire to their charge.

There is no wrath like the cold fury of the professional spirit proved wrong by outsiders, and no folly comparable to its reactions under such conditions.