These two editorial articles were written for the January and February issues of "The International" (New York) in 1918 e.v. The United States entered the First World War by congressional declaration, signed by President Wilson on 6 April 1917 e.v., after a month of belligerency against our previously neutral ships by German submarines. These two editorial statements were published in "The International" (New York) at the close of that year, by which time the country's mobilization had preceded as far as voluntary efforts could take it, with overseas action still very limited. Real war, with the home-front oppression of rationing, nationalizations, and totalitarian sedition laws, was just around the corner, and occupied America through nearly all of 1918 e.v. This first piece is notable for its seemingly unambiguous reference to the Christian "Saviour of Humanity," in a public appeal to conventional spiritual sensibilities (directly above the bold "ALEISTER CROWLEY" byline) which is nearly unique in his works. It may be contrasted with the parallel appeal to classical pagan cultic "salvation" in the second piece. His prized volume of "Adonais" mentioned there is the original 1821 edition of Shelley's elegy on the death of Keats.

I.
England Speaks
(January 1918 e.v.)

"The most noble the Marquess of Lansdowne -- the American people." Indeed some such word of introduction is necessary, if not quite decent. In the Continental fashion, let me explain the quality of the person to whom I wish to introduce you.

Lord Lansdowne is The Fitzmaurice, and comes to us as a product of careful biological selection since William the conqueror. He has never taken any very active part in politics, except the Battle of Hastings, merely accepting the Foreign Office or some similar post to oblige his country, and discharging its duties on sane, conservative lines.
Lord Lansdowne represents all the best Englishmen. He does not represent those who have been crushed biologically by industrialism, or the alien money lenders who have England by the throat. He speaks for the nobility, the gentry, and the yeomanry, for the men who were England (not "patriots," please!) at Agincourt, whose future is as indissolubly linked with English soil as is their past.

It is, therefore, natural that Lord Lansdowne should have said exactly what I have been saying in this paper ever since its owners, in a magnificent spirit of Fair Play, offered England (in my humble person) a voice in America.
For some curious reason, perhaps because I like to collect lunatics as George Windsor likes to collect postage stamps, I find myself regarded by superficial thinkers as a radical and revolutionary. I am in truth the most crusted of Tories, bred in the bone, and dyed in the wool. I believe, for example, that if we abandon the Catholic ideal of marriage, one may as well not have marriage at all. So, if we abandon the hierarchical system in religion or politics, one cannot stop short of anarchy, as soon as some occasion of stress forces people to make decisions. The Church of England had more dissenting movements in a century than the Church of Rome in ten. It was a makeshift. So were the Girondina; so was Kerensky. Once leave the unintellectual, illogical, unjust anchorage of Wisdom, and you are tossed madly on the insane waves of Reason.

Men are fit to hunt, fish, and create; women to cook, to labor in the fields, and to bear children. Abandon this conception with all its obvious demerits, and you merely arrive at a Bottomless Pit of vague argument, ending in the query "What is a man? What is a woman?" A very nauseating mess!
The strength of England has always lain with this "impossible" class of stupid brutes, who are always right, because they are swayed by radical instinct (or "wisdom") instead of by reason.
A pointer knows more about the location of a pheasant than Darwin after half a century of Natural History. Similarly, in Germany, it is the landed aristocracy that speak and fight for their country. Your Liebknechts are always being swayed by "argument"; your Junkers know without being told. The class with "a stake in the country" is the class to trust. England knows that a Lansdowne of a Harcourt will never be false, and never foolish, though he may be utterly stupid.

Now Civilization itself is menaced by the war -- or rather by the revolutions attendant on the collapse of certain systems which had become unwieldy. Russia is only the advance guard of Bolshevikism. These people will have to be swept away by cannon, and knouted into common sense, before we have any true peace in the world again. Junkerthum and English Feudalism have their bad points, but they stand strain. It is only when all the individuals of a nation are as intelligent and clear-sighted as the French that democracy has any chance to live; and, in point of fact, Joffre would have been beaten at the Marne if he had not turned angrily on the politicians in Paris, with his famous, ""Aujour d'hui, messieurs, c'est moi qui parle,"" turning the Republic into a military autocracy by a single sublime gesture.
Similarly, as this country is ruled by strong men of practical common sense, war measures were taken here which no Tsar would ever have dared, with the result that, so far, America's military achievement stands as the world's record for all time.
The hierarchical and caste system is the system with biological truth to back it, and it always comes back as soon as the organism is in danger. This war will make an end of the "brilliant," "intellectual" nonsense of the George Bernard Shaws and the Leon Trotzkys; aristocracy will be re-established in a more enlightened form. Birth is not everything; we need brains as well. But we must put an end to the power of money, which is the corruption of all Virtue.

Listen to Lord Lansdowne; his voice is England's; England, sooner or later, will forget Lloyd George, and do what her heart and soul bid her. Our family quarrel with the Hohenzollerns was all very well; in fact, it was rather bad form of the blighters to bring in their beastly science. Damn those Liberals all the same! However, the mischief's done, and we can't help it. But, now, these Lenine fellows are trying to butt in, it won't do, don't you know?

II.
Wanted - Moderate Men
(February 1918 e.v.)

King Solomon said that he who ruleth his spirit is greater than he who taketh a city. Truly, indeed it has been a giant's task in these days to avoid the contagion of hysteria, the spiritual rabies of the baser sections of the press.
But in the last week or so statesmen have taken to borrowing (often without acknowledgment) from the editorial matter of the "International." There is no longer any pretense that the Germans are other than "men of like passions with ourselves," or that the Kaiser has dragooned them into unwilling submissives.
Also, there is a general acceptance of the belief, highly unpopular in Bolshevik circles, that the organized hierarchy is the most stable structure of society, that a man is better than a mess, and a cathedral than a pile of stones.

The excuse given in private by the extremists for their bombast in public has been that it was necessary to spur the unwilling public into war. The situation would be Gilbertian were it not so devilish; but its usefulness is over. It is time that the voice of reasonable men should be heard in the land. It is probably hopeless to ask people to think for themselves. In the last week or two the New York "Times, Sun," and even the "World," have more or less turned upon the President to rend him. The public is becoming familiar with what must be to the man in the street quite inexplicable tergiversations.
The extremists are now attacking Mr Wilson as they attacked us a month of so ago. We can, therefore, appeal to rational thought and calm balance, and say to men and women of good will everywhere in the world, "Come forward, make yourselves heard, give your support to the people who are fighting the battles of good sense."

It is not for us, perhaps, but for other statesmen, to determine what can honorably be accepted by any given nation, but we can at least insist that those who speak for us shall speak with good faith and without rancor, with sympathy and understanding. We shall not fight with less courage and determination because we are chivalrous. The days of the cave-man, when crazy and unthinking rage could determine a victory, are past. A handful of British soldiers were able to defeat countless hordes of Madhists because this was understood. It was the dervish who possessed the fanatical rage, the unthinking courage. The Briton opposed to him cool thought, armchair organization, careful aim. He did not hate his enemy. He simply shot him dead. Kipling expressed the feeling of the British soldier admirably in his famous poem:

"So 'ere's to you, Fuzzy Wuzzy, an' the missus an' the kid, We 'ad orders for to smash you, so course we went and did."

That is the spirit in which [we] should all of us be fighting. The observer will notice that, ever since Lord Lansdowne formulated the feeling of that silent element in England which determines her policy, statesmen have been making clear their war aims with much more elasticity than before. There is a feeling in the air that it is time to talk things over quietly. One cannot do this with a cannibal who is suffering from acute delirious mania; and, therefore the theory that the enemy was this kind of person had to be given up by all parties. In other words, the slogan of ""Deutschland uber Alles"" and its equivalents in other languages have had to be altered to our own little effort in motto making: "Humanity first."

I have no wish to rub it in with an "I told you so," to point out that my so-called pro-German writings of last year are the same as the utterances of the President of the United States and of the Premier of England of this year. For, in truth, I am not conscious of victory, but of defeat. It has not been the spirit of humanity which has dictated the change of policy. That change has been forced upon the various governments by necessity. My work is yet to do. It is still necessary to prove to men that they are cutting their own throats by anger, greed, and ambition. It is still necessary to appeal to self-interest. The planet has been taught an appalling lesson; but will men learn it? Will they really understand that even on the lowest ground the philosopher and the poet are their real friends, that that man of the world is really as much of a fool as he is a knave. Selfishness is the highest stupidity. I cannot hurt my brother without hurting myself. That is what some of us have been preaching for many a long day; and because we have preached it we have been called unpractical; we have been called traitors.
The event has proved only too terribly that we were the patriots and the sages. The time has come to put that lesson into practice. We must take away the power from the self-seeking scoundrels who have been boosting themselves as practical men; and, although the mechanical details of reconstruction must necessarily be left to people of experience in each branch, yet the theory must be left to people who understand truth in its deepest sense. We must entrust the supreme government to the supreme philosopher.

In the meantime our urgent necessity is to make place for the moderate man, to him who has shown by his detached attitude that he could see an inch or two beyond his nose. The President's "war aim" message is most significant in that connection. We do not want people with entirely new theories of government. This is no moment for revolutionary social measures. The world is one vast wound, and the business of the moment is to heal it so far as may be. For this purpose we need soothing applications such as universal charity, and we must complete the work of sterilizing the bacillus of hatred. There could never have been a war if the men in power had had the slightest realization of what it was going to be like. Yet these people were all excellent specimens of the type of man that has been in power for centuries.
The moral is to get rid of the type. However, for the moment, the political issue is less radical in character. It will be enough if we sternly refuse a hearing to the bloodthirsty cries of those people who think that the People is but a mob of savages, and that the only way to obtain power over them is to appeal to their more senseless passions.
We want moderate men.

finis