John Morley: “All improvements have to be urged in apologetic, almost in supplicatory tones.”

True merit once resigned, No trick nor feint will serve as well.

It is a case so to speak of “limited liability.” We are bound in honour—you cannot put a legal construction upon it—to see in concert with others that these arrangements are maintained.

For this line of contention he was called an “unpatriotic trumpet of disaster,” and other names commonly bestowed on all men in all countries who venture to say that what chances for the hour to be a popular war is a blunder.

People still believe that Russian diplomats are particularly crafty and clever, full of artifices and stratagems, but that is not the case.