John Morley: “I own I see very little else in the political arena that is determined or that is intelligible.”

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.

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

A rendering less apt for this occasion finds favour with some scholars, that true virtue can never be restored to those who have once fallen away from it.

Yet he had prepared this document for the very purpose of tempting France into a declaration of war.