During the First World War Orage defended what he saw as the interests of the working class. On 6 August 1914 he wrote in "Notes of the Week" in "The New Age": ″We believe that England is necessary to Socialism, as Socialism is necessary to the world.″ On 14 November 1918 Orage wrote of the coming peace settlement (embodied in the Treaty of Versailles): "The next world war, if unhappily there should be another, will in all probability be contained within the clauses and conditions attaching to the present peace settlement."