domestic reform should be carried out with a generous hand so as to make this country fit to be lived in by the heroes who had served it so well on the field of battle.
A great programme of reconstruction was thus to be taken in hand, largely at the expense of our defeated enemies, against whom a strongly vindictive feeling was still prevalent. The old-fashioned English habit of hammering your enemy as hard as ever you can when fighting, and then, when you have beaten him "thorough and thorough," of picking him up and shaking his hand and letting him off much too lightly was gone, except in the minds of a small minority, and had given place to a feeling of lingering hostility and vindictiveness.
Here again we have to remember the special circumstances of the war out of which we had emerged. Former wars had been fought by a comparatively small number of the population of countries engaged, with comparatively little interruption to the ordinary life of the greater part of the nation. This time the horrors of war had been brought home to nearly every inhabitant of the countries concerned owing to the enormous number of the combatants engaged and the consequent bereavement and loss spread over the whole population owing to the high proportion of casualties, also by the
