I do not, of course, mean that a citizen in wartime should be free to communicate secret military plans to the enemy; I do mean that if a man feels, like Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, that British policy in South Africa is “methods of barbarism,” it is his right, as well as his duty, to say so.
He defends the right of citizens to criticize government actions, even in wartime, using historical examples.
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He showed that government by discussion can be made to illuminate great principles.
He realized that freedom is born of a certain spontaneity for which the rigid lines of doctrinaire thinkers left no room.
The case for the view that freedom of thought and speech is a good in itself is fairly easy to make.
The charge that he supported the Revolution in America and deserted it in France is without meaning; for in the one there is no word that can honorably be twisted to support the other.
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