The Dumb Capables and the Noisy Incapables
Confronted with this picture of insensate delusion and folly, the
critical reader will immediately counterplead that England all
this time was conducting a war which involved the organization of
several millions of fighting men and of the workers who were
supplying them with provisions, munitions, and transport, and
that this could not have been done by a mob of hysterical
ranters. This is fortunately true. To pass from the newspaper
offices and political platforms and club fenders and suburban
drawing-rooms to the Army and the munition factories was to pass
from Bedlam to the busiest and sanest of workaday worlds. It was
to rediscover England, and find solid ground for the faith of
those who still believed in her. But a necessary condition of
this efficiency was that those who were efficient should give all
their time to their business and leave the rabble raving to its
heart's content. Indeed the raving was useful to the efficient,
because, as it was always wide of the mark, it often distracted
attention very conveniently from operations that would have been
defeated or hindered by publicity. A precept which I endeavored
vainly to popularize early in the war, "If you have anything to
do go and do it: if not, for heaven's sake get out of the way,"
was only half carried out.
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