Probably they wouldn't have believed it.

So the Liberal Cabinet went on in silence, knowing that war was coming, but not exactly when it was coming, and they didn't make even a second big gun.
Now here was the same silence in this "democracy" that they now complain of in ours.

Rather an interesting and discouraging parallel--isn't it?
Public opinion has turned Lord Haldane out of office because he didn't tell the public what he declares they wouldn't have believed.

If the English had raised an army in 1912, and made a lot of big guns, Austria would not have trampled Serbia in the earth.

There would have been no war now; and the strong European Powers might have made then the same sort of protective peace-insurance combine that they will try to make after this war is ended.