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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41129 ***
+
+The Way to Win
+By William Le Queux
+Published by Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent and Co Ltd, London.
+This edition dated 1916.
+
+The Way to Win, by William Le Queux.
+
+________________________________________________________________________
+
+________________________________________________________________________
+THE WAY TO WIN, BY WILLIAM LE QUEUX.
+
+Foreword.
+
+I do not think anyone who has studied the progress of the War with care
+and patience can deny that, during the past few months, a mighty change
+has come over the aspect of the great struggle.
+
+A year ago, when I wrote "Britain's Deadly Peril," the fortunes of the
+Allies appeared to be at the lowest ebb.  Indomitable energy and
+perseverance have since worked wonders.  To-day we plainly see that the
+conquering march of the Teuton has been arrested and the process of
+forcing back his hordes has begun.
+
+Britain--the fierce Lion of Britain--is at last fully aroused to the
+momentous issues which hang on the decision, and has flung herself with
+all her unrivalled tenacity, and with a unanimity unparalleled in our
+history, into the titanic conflict.
+
+Russia, France, and Italy have responded to the call with equal
+nobility.  To-day the Allies are more than a match for the Hun in
+manpower; they are equal to them, at least, in the supply of munitions,
+the lack of which so badly hampered our cause last year.  Finally, the
+great new masses of the British Army, straining at the leash, are
+eagerly awaiting the signal to hurl themselves at the foe for his
+destruction.
+
+The British Navy, silent and invincible, holds the seas of all the
+world, and Germany and her Allies are to-day feeling the pinch of war in
+most deadly earnest.  Prices in enemy countries are rising by leaps and
+bounds; the food supply is beginning to fail; money is lacking; the
+value of the mark is falling, and there is every prospect of a shortage
+of men--cannon-fodder they were once called by Germans--in the near
+future.
+
+We are on the eve of great events.
+
+Already we hear the ominous rumblings which prelude the breaking of the
+storm.  The great clash is at hand which, for good or ill, shall settle
+the destinies of our world for many generations to come--perhaps for
+ever.
+
+Can we doubt the issue?  Assuredly not.  The spirit of our dear old
+Britain and her glorious Allies is unbroken, and still unbreakable.
+Cost what it may, they are fully determined to smash, once and for ever,
+the accursed Teuton attempt to dominate the world and throw back the
+clock of civilisation for centuries.  There will be no faltering and no
+turning back on Great Britain's part until that great end is attained.
+
+Courage and resolution and a hard fist are the keys of the situation for
+the Allies.  We have them in abundant measure.  And unless Britain is
+unthinkably false to all the traditions that have made her great, our
+triumph in the Near To-morrow is assured.
+
+William Le Queux.
+
+Devonshire Club, London, March, 1916.
+
+CHAPTER ONE.
+
+THE RIFT IN THE CLOUDS.
+
+If we could imagine a being from another planet dropped suddenly on this
+old earth of ours and left with the aid of maps to figure out for
+himself the real position of the world-war, we could readily imagine
+that it would seem to him that the Germans were winning "hands down."
+
+Perhaps there would be a good deal of excuse for such a belief.
+
+He would see, in the first place, that the Germans had overrun and
+captured the whole of Belgium except one very small portion.  He would
+see that the greater part of Northern France was in their undisputed
+possession.  He would see that they had driven the Russians from Poland
+and penetrated far within the boundaries of Russia proper.
+
+He would also see that they had almost completely conquered or cajoled
+the Balkan States, and that German trains were running from the North
+Sea to Constantinople.  He would see them holding apparently impregnable
+lines of defences against forces at least as strong as their own--
+probably much stronger.  He would see them or their Allies holding up
+British forces in Persia and in Mesopotamia.  He would see the Italians
+apparently firmly held along the mountainous boundaries of the Austrian
+Empire.  He would see that a great British army had been driven out of
+Gallipoli.  He would unquestionably come to the conclusion that the
+cause of the Allies was a lost cause, and would probably conclude that
+the best thing they could do would be to make a speedy peace on the best
+terms the victors could be induced to grant.
+
+And he would be unquestionably wrong in his deduction, even though we
+admit the accuracy of his facts.
+
+For, like the thoughtless and the whimperers among us, he would for want
+of knowledge leave out of his consideration certain hard facts which,
+properly considered, would reverse his judgment.  Like the thoughtless
+and the whimperers, he would judge too much from mere appearances and
+would fail to see the real essential things.  He would fail to see the
+wood for the trees; he would mistake the shadow for the substance.  Just
+so the German people to-day are making the mistake of thinking that the
+occupation of enemy territory, a mere temporary advantage gained through
+treacherous preparation for war at a time when they professed to be
+working for peace, constitutes the victory that must be theirs before
+they could hope to gain the world-dominion upon which, as we now know,
+their hearts and the hearts of their rulers have been set for the last
+forty years.
+
+For eighteen months the civilised world has been struggling against the
+most formidable menace to its liberties by which it has ever been faced.
+For eighteen months we have seen the enemy apparently going on from
+triumph to triumph.  We have seen the devastation of Belgium, the
+crucifixion of a little people whose only wish was that they should be
+allowed to live their happy lives in peace, and whose only crime was
+that they dared to resist the Prussian bully.  We have seen the
+martyrdom of Poland.  We have seen the very heart of France--
+incomparable Paris--threatened with destruction.
+
+We have seen the stately memorials of a great civilisation, such as
+Germany has never known and never can know, wrecked and plundered.  We
+have seen innocent civilians murdered in hundreds, women and children
+sent to death or a far worse fate.  We have seen the ruin of Serbia.  We
+have lost thousands of our best and bravest sons.  We have seen the
+tragic failure in the Gallipoli Peninsula--itself a mere incident of the
+world-war, yet one of the greatest military undertakings upon which we
+have ever embarked.  We have failed conspicuously to protect the little
+nations in whose cause we drew the sword, and who have gone down in ruin
+under the iron heel of a ferocious tyranny beside which the worst
+oppression of historic times seems mild in comparison.  Can it be a
+matter of wonder if the cry, "How long, O Lord, how long?" goes up from
+the fainting heart of outraged civilisation?
+
+Yet the darkest hour is ever the herald of the dawn; and if to-day we
+try with a single mind to penetrate the fog and mystery with which this
+greatest of all wars is surrounded, we shall see that there is really
+and truly a rift in the clouds.  No doubt we have still many days of
+storm and stress before us.  The end is not yet.  But, in the noble
+language of the King, the goal is drawing into sight.  The sun of
+victory is not yet shining fully upon us, but none the less the dawn is
+at hand.  Already its first faint gleams are breaking in upon our eyes;
+there are abundant signs, if we lift up our hearts and our courage, that
+the long period of gloom and depression is passing away.
+
+Properly to understand the position as it exists to-day we must look
+backward to the years 1870 and 1871, for in those years was born the
+spirit of aggression and arrogance which ever since has been the driving
+power of Germany.  After years of preparation, when so far as possible
+everything was ready, Germany fell suddenly upon a France torn by
+internal dissensions, weak through want of preparation, and utterly
+unready for war.  Naturally there could be but one end to such a
+conflict, and a few short months saw France helpless beneath the heel of
+the invader.  Germany emerged from that war with almost incalculable
+profit, firmly imbued with the idea that she was invincible, and
+convinced that at any moment she chose she could reach out her greedy
+hands and grasp the sceptre of European domination.  Then, as she
+thought, she could with safety enter upon a conflict with an England
+which had grown over-rich and perhaps over-lazy.  Then the real enemy
+could be crushed, and the world-dominion of which her megalomaniac
+rulers dreamed would be within her grasp.
+
+If a nation has determined upon war, there is never any lack of excuse,
+and Germany chose her time well.  Her blow fell at a time when no single
+one of the Allies was prepared for war.  That fact alone fixes
+absolutely the responsibility for the present appalling conflict, and in
+the days to come the unanimous verdict of history will be that the War
+was deliberately provoked by Germany through sheer greed and lust of
+power.
+
+For, be it remembered, there was no legitimate ambition before Germany
+which she was not perfectly free to enjoy.  Her trade was free and
+unhampered, the seas were as open to her use as to our own, she
+possessed vast colonial dominions which gave her every opportunity for
+all the legitimate expansion of which she could dream for centuries to
+come.  She had grown rich and prosperous in the exercise of the freedom
+which she has ever been the first to deny to others.  No one menaced her
+or sought to do her injury.  But she was the _nouveau riche_ among the
+nations.  She had been poisoned for a long course of years with the
+false doctrine that the German was something essentially superior to the
+peoples of other races, and she owes her approaching downfall, which is
+as certain as the rising of to-morrow's sun, to the blind teachers of
+the blind who have imbued her with that spirit of envy and arrogance
+which may be as fatal to a nation as to an individual.
+
+We all know only too well what happened when war broke out.  Germany,
+with her armies trained to the hour after years of patient preparation,
+with her forces ready to the last man and the last gun, shamelessly
+broke her plighted word with the invasion of Belgium.  She had counted
+that there, at least, she would meet with no resistance; she could not
+realise that a little people, even to save its honour, would dare to
+oppose the onrush of her countless hordes.  In that she made her first
+and, perhaps, her greatest mistake.  Just as she thought that England
+would not draw the sword for a "scrap of paper," so she thought that
+Belgium would not dare to resist.
+
+We know now that she was wrong; we know, too, that the heroism of the
+Belgians surely saved Europe in those first days by gaining the
+priceless time which enabled France and England to throw their scanty
+forces across the path of the invader, which led ultimately to the great
+battle of the Marne, that titanic conflict which surely and decisively
+smashed once and for ever the German plans.  In spite of all that has
+happened since, in spite of the apparent victories Germany has won, in
+spite of the territories she has occupied, the defeat of the Marne
+marked the beginning of her final overthrow.
+
+But the peril was appalling.  France, Russia, and Britain were alike
+unprepared for war, short of men, short of munitions, short of
+everything which would have enabled them at once to meet the common
+enemy on anything like equal terms.  The days are gone for ever when
+victory can be won by men alone; modern war is too machine-like in its
+developments, the importance of supplies and organisation is far too
+great to give a poorly equipped army the slightest chance of success.
+Not men alone, but munitions are the secret of success to-day, and every
+single advantage that Germany has won since war broke out has been won
+by her superiority in mechanical equipment.  Her men, considered
+individually, are certainly not the equals of either the French or the
+Russians or the British; they have neither the dash of the French, nor
+the dogged courage and endurance of the Russians, nor the personal
+_sang-froid_ and cool initiative of the British.  But Germany had the
+numbers and the equipment, and to numbers and equipment alone she owes
+such successes as she has gained.
+
+Caught unprepared at the outset of war, the Allies were naturally in a
+position which must well have seemed hopeless.  Germany reaped to the
+full the advantages which she had sought in long preparation for war
+under the guise of peace.  Her armies plunged forward with resistless
+momentum until they were within sight of the very gates of Paris, and in
+the eyes of the world it was merely a matter of time as to when she
+would occupy the French capital.  Then came Von Kluck's amazing blunder,
+the swift stroke of the French and British against the German right
+wing, and the precipitate retreat which led to the defeat at the Marne.
+From that day, in spite of apparent successes, the fortunes of Germany
+have been on the wane.
+
+There was no mistake about the reply of civilisation to the German
+menace.  France, Russia, and England threw down the guage in the most
+unmistakable terms in the historic declaration that neither would
+conclude a separate peace without the others.  That, we have now to
+recognise, is one of the main facts which must operate most powerfully
+in bringing about the final defeat of Germany.  In no particular can she
+hope to rival the resources of the Allies, and so long as the Allies
+hang together they are unmistakably on the road to final victory.  It is
+for this reason that at the present moment it is the main object of
+German diplomacy to sow distrust and suspicion among the partners in the
+Quadruple Entente.  Their one and only hope--and they know it--is to
+provoke a quarrel among the Allies which would not merely rob the Allies
+of all hope of final victory, but would give the Huns and their dupes a
+reasonable chance--indeed, more than a reasonable chance--of snatching
+triumph from the very jaws of defeat.
+
+There is a school of croakers very much in evidence in England at
+present who can see nothing of good in anything which their own country
+has done and is doing.  They remind one of Gilbert's
+
+  Idiot who praises in enthusiastic tone
+  Each century but this, and every country but his own.
+
+They are, of course, always with us, but at the present moment they are
+more than usually aggressive, and we notice them perhaps more than is
+good for us.  They are the chief source of that dangerous form of
+pessimism which we see exemplifying itself in a constant belittling of
+the enormous efforts and the enormous sacrifices which this country has
+made.  According to these mischievous propagandists, nothing we do or
+have done can possibly be sufficient or right.  The effects of this
+perpetual "calamity howling" on our own people is bad enough; it is far
+worse upon the peoples of the Allied countries and the neutrals,
+because, not understanding our national peculiarities, they are apt to
+take us at a wholly absurd valuation and to think that, as our own
+people are constantly accusing us of slackness in a war in which we have
+so much at stake, there must be something in the charge.  If plenty of
+mud is thrown, some of it is tolerably sure to stick, and there can be
+no doubt that the perpetual depreciation of British efforts by people in
+this country has had a most dangerous effect, and has, in fact, played
+the German game to perfection both here and abroad.
+
+Those who wish to form an adequate realisation of what Britain has
+really done in the cause of civilisation should try to take a longer
+view, and try also to throw their minds backward to the condition of
+affairs which existed when the declaration of war came eighteen months
+ago.  They should try, in fact, to learn something of the lessons taught
+by our past history.
+
+We can start with the indisputable and undisputed fact that so far as
+the war on land was concerned this country was entirely unprepared to
+take up the role it has since assumed.  That is a proposition which not
+even the Germans, who are so ready to accuse England of having caused
+the War, can very well dispute.  Throughout our history we have been a
+naval and not a military Power, though it is of course true that, judged
+by the standards of other days, we have now and again put forward very
+considerable military efforts.
+
+But it was many a long year since British troops had fought on the
+Continent of Europe, and it is safe to assume that the great majority of
+people in this country, had they been asked, would have replied without
+hesitation that we should never again take part in the land fighting in
+a continental war.
+
+Now it must be obvious to anyone who takes the trouble to give the
+matter a moment's thought that, for the purposes of war as it is
+understood by the great military nations of Europe, the British Army as
+it existed in August, 1914, was hopelessly inadequate.  Our real
+strength lay on the sea, where it has always lain.  It is true that, for
+its size, the British force which was thrown into Flanders in the early
+days of the struggle was perhaps the most perfectly trained and equipped
+army that ever took the field.
+
+But no one will contend that it was adequate in size, and we know that
+the Germans regarded it as a "contemptible little army" that was to be
+brushed aside with hardly an effort by the German hordes.  It consisted
+of perhaps 120,000 men, and undoubtedly, as our French friends have
+generously admitted, it played a part worthy of "the best and highest
+traditions" of our race.  But it was not an army on the continental
+scale.
+
+What has been done since?  How have we taken up the task of creating
+forces which might be regarded as commensurate to meet the menace by
+which civilisation found itself faced?
+
+Our "contemptible little army," thanks to the genius of Lord Kitchener,
+has grown until to-day it numbers something in the neighbourhood of four
+million men.  That is a fact which the world knows and recognises, and
+in itself alone it is sufficient to refute the contention of those who
+are to be found preaching in and out of season that Britain's efforts
+have been lamentably inadequate.  Great armies are not to be made in a
+day or a year, they do not spring fully armed from the earth, and the
+fact that we, a naval rather than a military Power, have in the course
+of eighteen months raised and equipped forces on such a scale ought to
+be sufficient to confound those shallow critics who are eternally
+bewailing our supposed "slackness," which, as a matter of fact, has no
+existence outside their own disordered imaginations.  I do not believe
+there is to be found to-day a military writer whose opinion is of any
+value who would not agree that the effort which Britain has made is one
+of the most stupendous in all military history.
+
+In France, in Russia, and in Italy everyone whose authority is regarded
+as having any substantial basis is agreed on the point, and the Germans
+themselves, however they may affect to sneer at our army of "hirelings,"
+know a great deal too much about military matters not to recognise that
+one of the very gravest of their perils is the growing military power of
+England.  That power will be exercised to the full when the time comes,
+and it will assuredly be found to be of the very greatest importance in
+bringing about the overthrow of German hopes and ambitions.
+
+We all know--the whole world knows--why the military power of England
+has not yet reached its full majesty.  We all know that in the War of
+to-day a superabundance of munitions is demanded which none could have
+expected from the history of the past.  Every form of military stores--
+guns, rifles, shell, ammunition--all must be provided on a scale of
+colossal magnitude.
+
+It is the fact that Germany alone of all the warring nations partly
+realised this, and in her careful preparations for a war of her own
+seeking, for which she chose her own time, accumulated in the days of
+peace such enormous reserves of munitions as she hoped would render her
+to a large extent independent of manufacture during the actual period of
+fighting.  It is certain that Germany hoped to overthrow Russia and
+France in a series of swift, brief attacks without trenching dangerously
+upon her reserve stocks.  We know now that she was wrong; but we know,
+too, that she came within an ace of success.
+
+That she realised her error and embarked upon the manufacture of
+munitions on a vast scale is true, but none the less it is also true
+that she cannot hope to compete in this respect with the united
+resources of the Allies once they get into their full stride.  Slowly,
+perhaps, but none the less surely, she is being overtaken even in the
+department which she made almost exclusively her own, and the day is
+coming when she will have not the remotest prospect of keeping up an
+adequate reply to the storm of high explosives which will break upon her
+lines east, west, north, and south.  When that day comes--and it may be
+nearer than most of us think--we shall see the swiftest of changes in
+the present position of the War.  There will be an end at last to the
+long deadlock in which we and our Allies have been forced to act on the
+defensive.
+
+Already, indeed, the change is in sight.  Germany to-day, in spite of
+her frantic struggles, is absolutely and firmly held in a ring of steel.
+She is, in every real sense of the word, on the defensive; her
+spasmodic attacks are purely defensive in their origin and conception,
+and the steadily increasing pressure of her foes must sooner or later
+find and break through some weak spot in lines which are already
+seriously extended and must soon wear thin.
+
+I do not pretend for a moment that everything has gone as well as we
+could wish; I do not pretend that there have not been mistakes, delays,
+lack of decision, lack of foresight.  No war was ever fought without
+mistakes; we are not a race of supermen.  But I do say that we have made
+such an effort as has perhaps never been made in history before to meet
+a series of conditions of which neither we in particular nor the world
+at large has ever experienced.
+
+The nation that could wage war without making mistakes would very
+speedily dominate the world.
+
+If the Germans had not made mistakes at least as great as those of the
+Allies, they would long ago have won a supreme and crushing victory
+which would have left the whole of Europe prostrate at their feet.
+Whereas what do we see to-day?  The plain, unalterable fact is that in
+her sudden assault upon nations wholly unprepared for it Germany has not
+won a single success of the nature which is decisive.  She did not
+succeed in "knocking out" either of the enemies who really count, and
+she soon found herself condemned to a long and dragging war of the very
+nature which all her experts, for years past, have admitted must be
+fatal to German hopes and ambitions.  Germany has always postulated for
+success swift and shattering blows; she believed she could deal such
+blows at her enemies in detail before she was defeated by a prepared
+unity against which she must be powerless.  She hoped to shatter France
+before the slow-moving Russians could get into their stride, and leave
+her ruined and crushed while she turned to meet the menace from the
+East.  She counted on winning the hegemony of Europe before she could be
+checked by a combination ready to meet her on more than level terms.
+There she made the first and greatest of her mistakes, a mistake from
+the effects of which she can never recover.
+
+And will anyone contend that, in bringing the German design to hopeless
+ruin, Britain has not played a worthy part?  Will anyone be found bold
+enough to assert that the position on the Continent to-day would not
+have been very widely different if Britain had chosen the ignoble part
+and refused to unsheath the sword in defence of those great principles
+for which our forefathers in all ages have been ready to fight and to
+die?  Will anyone venture to express a doubt that, but for the
+assistance of Britain, France must have been crushed?  And, with France
+helpless and Britain neutral, what would have been Russia's chance of
+escaping disaster?
+
+I need hardly say that I do not put these suggestions forward with any
+idea of belittling the part--the very great and very heroic part--which
+has been played in the great world-tragedy by France and Russia.  But I
+do seriously suggest--and French and Russian writers have been the first
+generously to admit it--that England's assistance has made their
+campaigns possible.
+
+If we have not done the terrific fighting which has been done by France
+and Russia, we have at least borne a very respectable share in the fray;
+we can leave others to speak for us on this score.  But we have
+supported our Allies in other fields; we have, to a very large extent,
+found the sinews of war; we have made of our land the workshop of the
+Allies, and poured out a stream of munitions which has been of the
+utmost value, even if it has not made all the difference between victory
+and defeat.  And, above all and beyond all, we have, by our sea power,
+practically carried the campaigns of our Allies on our backs.  Thanks to
+our unchallenged supremacy afloat, the Allies have been able to move in
+all parts of the world with a security unknown in any other war in
+history.  While the German Fleet skulks in the fastnesses of the Kiel
+Canal, and the German flag has disappeared from the ocean highways of
+the world, the ships of the Allies move almost unhindered on their daily
+business, the endless supplies of men and munitions go to and fro
+unchallenged except by the lurking submarines of the enemy, which, for
+all their boastings, are powerless to affect vitally the ultimate issue
+or to do more than inflict damage which, compared with the targets
+offered them, is practically of no significance.
+
+Has our country anything to be ashamed of in the contribution it has
+thus made to the war for the liberation of civilisation from the
+domination of brute force?  Assuredly not.  And when in the fullness of
+time the opportunity is offered us for a more striking demonstration of
+what British world-power means, I am confident that we shall see ample
+proof that the spirit and temper of our race is as fine as ever, and
+that we shall play a worthy part in the final overthrow of the common
+enemy.  In the meantime let us make an end of the constant stream of
+self-depreciation which is far removed from real modesty and
+self-respect; let us do our part in that stern and silent temper which
+has for all time been part of our great heritage.
+
+Stern work lies before us; the long-drawn agony is not yet even
+approaching its close.  But we can best help forward the end if we
+approach our task not with empty boasting, not with perpetual
+whimperings and self-reproach, but with the cool courage and dogged
+determination which have carried us so far through the worst dangers
+that have threatened us in the past, and which, if we play our part
+without faltering, will yet bring us to a triumphant issue from the
+perils which beset us to-day.
+
+CHAPTER TWO.
+
+OUR INVINCIBLE NAVY.
+
+It is the brightest and most encouraging feature of the War that British
+supremacy at sea is unchallenged and probably unchallengeable by
+Germany.
+
+It is true that the main German Fleet has not yet dared to give battle
+in the open sea, and that the endeavours of scattered units afloat have
+met with speedy disaster.  It is no less true that should the "High
+Canal Admiral" venture forth from the secluded shelters in which the
+Imperial German Navy has for so many months concealed itself, its
+prospects of dealing a successful blow at the maritime might of Britain
+are exceedingly slender.
+
+None the less, it is incredible that, sooner or later, the German Navy
+will fail to attempt what German writers are fond of describing as a
+"Hussar Stroke."  We can contemplate that issue--and we know our sailors
+do so--with every confidence.  In every single particular--in ships, in
+men, in moral, and in traditions--the British Navy is superior to that
+of Germany.  Even without the powerful help we should receive from our
+French and Italian Allies, British control over the ocean highways is
+supreme.
+
+A Radical journal, which for years past has been conspicuous for its
+laudation of everything German, has lately tried to make our flesh creep
+with tales of the mounting in German warships of a monster gun--said to
+be of 17-inch calibre--which was so utterly to outrange anything we
+possess as to render our control of the North Sea doubtful and shadowy.
+
+It is strange to find a journal which, before the War, was one of the
+chief asserters of the peaceful intentions of Germany thus passing into
+the ranks of the "scaremongers."  When the late Lord Roberts ventured,
+before the War, to point out the dangers which lay before us, he was
+denounced as an "alarmist."  Yet on the very doubtful supposition that a
+single shell which fell into Dunkirk was a 17-inch missile the _Daily
+News_ has built up a "scare" article worthy only of a race of
+panic-mongers, and full of false premisses and false deductions from the
+first line to the last.  Such are the changed views brought about by
+changed circumstances!
+
+But even supposing that the Germans actually possess a 17-inch naval
+gun, is the _Daily News_ content to assume that the Admiralty and the
+Government are not fully aware of the fact and that they have taken no
+steps whatever to meet the new danger?  It is a literal fact that we
+have always been an inch or two ahead of Germany in the calibre of our
+biggest guns--the history of the Dreadnought fully proves that--and it
+is incredible that we should suddenly be caught napping in a matter on
+which we have led the world.  I leave out of consideration the purely
+technical question as to whether such guns could by any possibility be
+fitted to ships designed and partly constructed to take smaller weapons;
+experts say that such a change would be impossible without what would
+amount to practical reconstruction.
+
+Putting these considerations on one side, is the record of our naval
+service such as to justify us in assuming that they know less than they
+have always known of the plans and intentions of the enemy?
+
+Mr Balfour's reply on the subject was plain and categorical; the naval
+authorities know nothing of any such weapon, and do not believe that it
+exists.  In all probability we shall be quite safe in accepting their
+estimate of the situation, and whatever the facts may be the Navy may be
+trusted to deal with new penis as they arise.  After all, a Navy is not
+merely so many ships and so many men armed with so many guns of such and
+such a size.  That is a fact which, however imperfectly it is
+appreciated in Germany, is well known here.  Tradition and moral count
+even more afloat than ashore; we possess both.  A Navy whose chief
+achievements have been the drowning of helpless non-combatants in the
+infamous submarine campaign may hardly be said to possess either.
+
+For many months now the German flag has vanished from the ocean highways
+of the world.  For many months British commerce has peacefully pursued
+its pathways to the uttermost ends of the earth.
+
+There have been times when the depredations of German raiders, such as
+the "Emden," caused some inconvenience and considerable loss.  There
+have been times when the submarine campaign has apparently had a great
+measure of success.  But though many ships, with their cargoes and with
+many innocent lives, have been sunk, nothing which the German pirates
+could do was sufficient seriously to threaten our overseas trade.  Very
+soon the marauders were rounded up and destroyed, and in a space of time
+which, before the War, would have been deemed incredible the seas were
+practically free for the passage of the ships of the Allies.
+
+In the early days of the War many good judges believed that the German
+commerce raiders would have been as effective against our overseas trade
+as were the French privateers in the days of the Napoleonic wars.
+Certain it is that it was the universal expectation that our losses in
+mercantile tonnage would have been far more grievous than has proved to
+be the case.
+
+We see now that this expectation was unduly alarmist.  But it was
+entertained not merely by amateur students of war, but by many of the
+sailors who have given a lifetime of thought to the problems of warfare
+at sea.  Every lesson that could be drawn from history suggested that
+the life of the German raiders would have been far longer than actually
+proved to be the case.  Those lessons, however, were learned in the days
+when the war fleets were composed of great sailing vessels which could
+keep the sea far longer without fresh supplies than is possible to-day.
+Cut off from any possible sources of regular supplies of food, coal, and
+ammunition, the few German ships which remained at liberty when war
+broke out were quickly hunted down by superior forces and destroyed
+until, a very few months after the outbreak of war, Germany's strength
+afloat was closely confined to the Baltic and a very small portion of
+the North Sea.
+
+Nothing like the achievements of the British Navy has ever been
+witnessed in the history of war.  Not even the most enthusiastic
+believer in sea power could have dreamed of such brilliant and striking
+successes; not even the most enthusiastic admirer of the British Navy
+could, in his most sanguine moments, have expected such results as have
+been attained.
+
+When we come to think of the expanse of ocean to be covered, the
+services which the British Navy has rendered to civilisation will be
+seen to be stupendous.  Not merely have all the German ships which were
+at liberty outside the North Sea and the Baltic been hunted down and
+destroyed, but the Grand Fleet, the darling of the Kaiser's heart, the
+object upon which millions have been poured out like water with the
+express purpose of crushing Britain, has been penned up in the narrowest
+of quarters, and from every strategical point of view has been reduced
+to practical impotence.  True, it succeeded, under cover of fog and
+darkness, in sending a squadron of fast ships to bombard undefended
+Scarborough, where its gallant efforts resulted in the killing and
+wounding of some hundreds of women, children, and other non-combatants
+who, had we been fighting a civilised foe, would have been perfectly
+safe from harm.  But a repetition of the attempt at this dastardly crime
+led to such condign punishment that the effort has never been repeated,
+and from that day to this German excursions at sea, so far, at least, as
+British waters are concerned, have been confined to the occasional
+appearance of stray torpedo craft and the campaign of submarine piracy
+and murder which has left upon the name of the German Navy a stigma
+which it will take centuries to eradicate.
+
+With the one solitary exception of the unequal fight off Coronel, where
+the "Good Hope" and "Monmouth" were destroyed by the greatly superior
+squadron of Von Spee, the Germans have uniformly had the worse of any
+sea fighting which they ventured to undertake.  Even the Baltic, in
+which they fondly imagined they had undisputed supremacy, has been
+rendered more than "unhealthy" by the activities of British submarines--
+so unhealthy, in fact, that the German attack upon the Gulf of Riga,
+which was to have led to the crushing of the Russian right wing and the
+advance upon Petrograd, ended in a dismal failure and the precipitate
+flight of the attackers.  That they will be any more successful in the
+future is practically unthinkable.  Stronger, both relatively and
+actually, than before the War, the British Navy calmly awaits "the day,"
+hoping it may soon come, when the Germans will stake their existence
+upon a last desperate effort to challenge that mastery of the sea the
+hope of which must be slipping for ever from their grasp.
+
+It is only necessary to say a few words about the atrocious policy of
+submarine "frightfulness" which culminated in the sinking of the
+"Lusitania" and the deliberate sacrifice of the lives of some 1,200
+innocent people who had nothing whatever to do with the War.  That
+policy, the deluded German people were solemnly assured, was to bring
+Britain to her knees by cutting off supplies of food and raw material,
+and starving her into submission.  It is worth noting in this connection
+that the Germans to-day are calling upon heaven and earth to punish the
+brutal English for attempting to "starve the German people" by a
+perfectly legitimate blockade carried out in strict accordance with the
+rules of international law.  We heard nothing of the iniquities of the
+"starvation" policy as long as the Germans hoped to be able to apply it
+to us in the same way that they applied it to Paris during the war of
+1870-71; it was only when they realised that the submarine policy had
+failed that they began the desperate series of appeals, directed
+especially to the United States, that they were being unfairly treated
+owing to Britain refusing to allow them the "freedom of the seas"--in
+other words, refusing to sit idly by while Germany obtained from the
+United States and elsewhere the food and munitions of which she stood,
+and stands, in such desperate need.
+
+As a matter of fact, the German submarine campaign has not even
+succeeded in reducing appreciably the strength of the British mercantile
+marine.
+
+Despite our losses, our mercantile marine is to-day, thanks to new
+building and purchases, but little weaker than when war broke out,
+while, so far as we can judge, the submarine campaign has failed to
+contribute in the slightest degree to the rise in food values which has
+imposed so great a burden upon large classes of people in our country.
+It has been in fact, a complete and absolute failure.  It has cost us,
+it is true, many valuable vessels and many valuable lives, but as a
+means to ending the War it has achieved practically nothing.  The policy
+of terrifying by murder has prospered no more afloat than it did ashore,
+while outside the ranks of the combatants it has done nothing but earn
+for Germany the contempt of the whole civilised world, to bring Germany
+within an ace of war with the United States, and to brand the German
+Navy and the entire German nation with an indelible stain of blood and
+crime.
+
+The submarine policy was a policy which could have been justified only
+by complete success.  It may suit the German Press, led by the nose by
+the Government, to tell the German people that hated England was being
+rapidly subdued by the efforts of the "heroic" murderers commanding the
+German U-boats.  We know differently.
+
+We have the authority of Mr Balfour for saying that the German losses
+in submarines have been "formidable," and it has been stated--and not
+contradicted--in the House of Commons that no fewer than fifty of these
+assassins of the sea have met the fate which their infamy richly
+deserved.  Unofficial estimates have put the number even higher.  We
+shall not know the exact facts until after the War, but we know at least
+that the German people have at length awakened to an uneasy realisation
+of the fact that they have murdered in vain, and that they have covered
+themselves with undying infamy to no real purpose.
+
+I do not suppose that knowledge sits very hardly upon their consciences;
+but even in Germany there must be people who are beginning to wonder
+what judgment the civilised world will pass upon them in the future, and
+how they are ever to hold up their heads again among civilised nations.
+And not even a German can remain perpetually indifferent to the judgment
+of the civilised world.
+
+By every means which ingenuity could devise and daring seamanship could
+carry into execution Germany's submarines have been chased, harried, and
+sunk, until, as we are informed upon reliable authority, the chiefs of
+the German Navy are finding it increasingly difficult to find and train
+submarine crews.  And small wonder!  No one questions the bravery of the
+German sailor, whatever we may think of his humanity.  But, also, he is
+human, and not the superhuman being which the Germans imagine themselves
+to be.  And when he sees, week after week and month after month,
+submarine after submarine venturing forth into the waters of the North
+Sea only to be mysteriously swallowed up in the void, one can understand
+that he shrinks appalled from a prospect sufficient to shake the nerves
+of men who, whatever their other qualities may be, have not been bred
+for hundreds of years to the traditions and the dangers of the sea.
+Small wonder that they quail from the unknown fate which for ever
+threatens them!  Many sally forth never to return; others, more
+fortunate, on reaching home have a tale to tell which, losing nothing in
+the telling, is not of a nature to encourage their fellows.
+
+It is said that a single voyage in a German submarine is enough so
+seriously to try the nerves of officers and men that they need a
+prolonged rest before they are ready to resume their duties.  Imagine
+the conditions under which they live!  Hunted day and night by the
+relentless British destroyers, faced ever by strange and unfamiliar
+perils and by traps of which they know nothing, it is hardly a matter of
+surprise if their nerves give way.
+
+The War has given us the most wonderful example the world has ever seen
+of what sea power means.  Thanks to their undisputed command of the
+ocean, the Allies have been able to carry on operations in widely
+separated theatres practically free from any of the difficulties which
+would certainly have proved insurmountable in the presence of strong
+hostile forces afloat.  We and our Allies have been able to transport
+men and munitions wherever we wished without serious hindrance, and even
+in the presence of hostile submarines we have only lost two or three
+transports in eighteen months of war.  That, it must be admitted, is a
+very wonderful record.
+
+Even the tragic blunder of the Dardanelles gave us a striking instance
+of what sea power can effect.  We were able, thanks to the Navy, not
+merely to land huge forces in the face of the enemy, but we were able
+also to re-embark them without loss under circumstances which, by all
+the laws of war, should have meant an appalling list of casualties.
+There can be no doubt whatever that had the re-embarking troops on the
+Gallipoli Pensinsula tried to reach their ships without having firm
+command of the sea, not more than a very small percentage of them would
+have survived.
+
+In considering the bearings of naval power to the great struggle as a
+whole, we must always keep in mind what the Germans expected and hoped
+when they declared war.  We know, of course, that they did not expect
+Britain to enter the War.  But at the same time they must have realised
+that there was a possibility of our doing so, and they had formulated a
+plan of campaign to meet such a contingency.  We know pretty well what
+that campaign was.  The German theory has been put into practice since;
+unfortunately for the Germans, it has not worked out quite in accordance
+with the text-books.  They declared for the "war of attrition"; their
+idea was that, by submarine attacks, the British Fleet could be so
+whittled down that at length the German main Fleet would be able to meet
+it with reasonable prospects of success.  Their Fleet, while the process
+of attrition was going on, was to remain sheltered in the unreachable
+fastnesses of the Kiel Canal.  The latter, however, is the only part of
+the German programme which has gone according to the book.
+
+The "High Canal Fleet" remains in the "last ditch," and apparently, at
+the time of writing, seems likely to remain there.  But the process of
+attrition has not made the progress the Germans hoped for.  It is true
+we have lost a number of ships through submarine attacks.  But it will
+not be overlooked by the Germans any more than by ourselves that the
+greater part of our losses was sustained in the early days of the
+submarine campaign.  As soon as the Navy "got busy" with the submarine
+pest our losses practically ceased, and it is now a long time since we
+have lost a fighting unit through torpedo attack.  As is usual with the
+Navy, our men set themselves to grapple with unfamiliar conditions, and
+their success has been very striking.  Not only have they been able to
+protect themselves against submarine attack, but they have made the home
+seas, at any rate, too hot to hold the pirates, dozens of which have
+been destroyed or captured.  And when the submarine war was transferred
+to the Mediterranean it was not very long before the Navy again had the
+menace well in hand.  In the meantime our building programme was pushed
+forward at such a rate that a very large number of ships of the most
+powerful class have been added to the fighting units of the Fleet, with
+the result that not merely relatively to the Fleet of Germany, but
+actually in point of ships, men, and guns, our Fleet to-day is stronger
+than it was when war broke out.  That, again, is an achievement wholly
+without parallel.  And it is one of the chief factors in considering the
+future of the campaign.  The Germans have never been able to rival us in
+speed of construction even in times of peace; it is in the last degree
+unlikely that they have been able to do so under the conditions that
+have prevailed during the past eighteen months.  I have not the least
+doubt that we are fully justified in assuming that our final victory at
+sea is assured--if, indeed, it is not practically won already.  The
+conditions are plain for everyone, both at home and abroad, to see for
+himself, and we have plenty of evidence to suggest that they are fully
+appreciated in Germany; the idle quays of Hamburg, the idle fleets of
+German merchant ships rotting in the shelter of neutral ports, the
+peaceful progress of the ships of the Allies over the seas of the world,
+and the growing stringency of conditions in Germany brought about by the
+British blockade are quite sufficient evidence for those Germans--and
+their number is growing--who are no longer blinded by the national
+megalomania.
+
+Our Navy is a silent service; it would perhaps be better for us if at
+times it were a little more vocal.  For there is no disguising the fact
+that there is a body of impatient grumblers at home who, because we do
+not read of a great sea victory every morning with our breakfasts, are
+apt to ask what the Navy is doing.  We can be quite sure that that
+question is not asked in Germany.  There, at any rate, the answer is
+plain.
+
+We can discount, I am sure, the tales we hear of Germany starving, and
+that the horrors of Paris in 1870 are being repeated.  That story is no
+doubt diligently spread abroad by the Germans themselves in the hope of
+appealing to the sentiment, or rather the sentimentality, of certain
+classes in the neutral nations.  At the same time, we cannot shut our
+eyes to the growing mass of evidence which goes to show that the
+stringency of the British blockade is producing a great and increasing
+effect throughout Germany.  To begin with, her export trade, despite the
+leaks in the blockade, has practically vanished, and it must be
+remembered that modern Germany is the creation of trade with overseas
+countries.  She grew rich on commerce; she might have grown richer if
+she had been content with the opportunities which were as fully open to
+her as to the rest of the world.  It is due to the steady strangling
+process carried out by the British Navy that her long accumulation of
+wealth has been decisively checked, and that she is dissipating that
+accumulation in what is inevitably bound to be a sure, if slow, bleeding
+to death.  And, whatever may be the course of the War, Germany's
+overseas trade can be resumed only by the permission or through the
+destruction of the British Navy.  That is a factor of supreme and
+tremendous importance.
+
+In the British blockade--in other words, in the British Fleet--we have
+the factor which in the long run must make possible the final overthrow
+of Germany.  I am not suggesting that we can win this war by sea power
+alone; the final crash must come through the defeat of Germany's land
+forces, since she is a land and not a sea Power.  But it is the
+operation of sea power which must make the final blow possible.  Sea
+power, and sea power alone, will make possible the final blockade of
+Germany by land as well as by sea.  The ring of the blockade already is
+nearly complete; and when the British and French, advancing from the
+base at Salonica, link up, as they must sooner or later, with the
+Russian forces coming south across the Balkans, Germany will be held in
+a ring of iron from which she will have no means of escape.
+
+She realises fully that she has not the remotest chance of breaking
+through the lines of the Allies in the West; she has failed utterly to
+break the Russian line in the East.  It is vital for her to break the
+ring by which she is nearly surrounded, and in this fact we have the
+explanation of her dash across the Balkans.  So far that dash has been
+attended with a great measure of success owing to the failure of the
+Allies to win the active support of Greece, Rumania, and Bulgaria.  She
+has succeeded in crushing Serbia and Montenegro, and in linking up with
+her Turkish Allies through the medium of the Constantinople railway.
+But Salonica, firmly held by the Allies, must ever be a thorn in the
+side of her progress to the East, and until she succeeds in reducing it
+her flank is open to a blow which would shatter her prospects in the
+East as decisively as they have already been shattered in the West.  We
+cannot imagine that the Allies have gone to Salonica solely for reasons
+of their health, and it needs no great acquaintance with military
+history to realise that the possession by the Allies of the Salonica
+lines may be as fatal to Germany as the holding of the lines of Torres
+Vedras by Wellington was fatal to the plans of Napoleon.
+
+The analogy is not exact--analogies seldom are--but "the Spanish ulcer"
+is sufficiently reproduced for practical purposes.  German commanders in
+the East can never feel safe so long as Salonica remains in our
+possession.  And I have no doubt that when the time is ripe we shall see
+the Allies advancing through the Balkans to join hands with the Russians
+and, it may be, with the Rumanians.  Then Germany will be definitely
+isolated, and the process of exhaustion, already considerably advanced,
+will proceed with ever-growing momentum, until it reaches the point when
+a combined attack on land by the whole of the Allies simultaneously will
+prove irresistible.  I am not one of those who believe that Germany can
+be defeated by economic pressure alone.  But it cannot be denied that
+economic pressure offers the greatest means of so weakening her power of
+resistance that her final military defeat will be rendered immeasurably
+easier.
+
+And we must always remember--there is too strong a tendency in certain
+quarters to forget it--that it is the principal duty of the British
+Navy, so long as the German Fleet prefers idleness to fighting, to bring
+about the reduction of the German power of resistance by a remorseless
+strangulation of her trade.  Our policy in this respect is perfectly
+definite.  It is that, paying due regard to the undoubted rights of
+neutral nations, we will allow nothing to reach Germany which will
+assist to prolong her powers of resistance.
+
+There has been a strong disposition in some quarters to represent the
+British Navy as fighting with one hand tied behind its back owing to the
+supposed apathy or worse of the Foreign Office.  Sir Edward Grey, in
+perhaps the greatest speech of his long career, has sufficiently
+disposed of that charge.  It is not denied that from a variety of
+causes, some of them at least beyond our control, Germany has obtained
+supplies which we would very gladly have denied to her.  But,
+unfortunately for us and fortunately for her, neutral nations have their
+rights, which we are bound to respect unless we wish to make fresh
+enemies.  It is beyond doubt that supplies are leaking into Germany
+through Holland and Scandinavia which we should be glad to keep out.  It
+is absolutely impossible to prove enemy destination in all these cases,
+and it must be remembered that unless we can prove this we have no right
+to interfere with the commerce of neutral nations, who are quite
+entitled, if they can do so, to supply Germany with precisely the class
+of goods which the United States is supplying to us.
+
+We are too apt to overlook the fact that there is nothing criminal in
+supplying guns and ammunition to Germany.  Neutral nations are free to
+do so--if they can.  We are entitled to stop them--also if we can.  But
+we are not entitled to interfere with the legitimate commerce of a
+neutral nation; in other words, we must prove that contraband is
+intended for the use of the enemy before we can lay hands upon it.
+
+It is this feature of international law which makes it so difficult for
+us to declare an absolute blockade of Germany.  And it is just this
+aspect of the case which is the justification of the trade agreements of
+the kind which has been concluded with Denmark.  Under that agreement,
+and under similar ones, we allow certain goods to be imported in normal
+volume to neutral countries under the assurance that they will not be
+re-exported to Germany.  The agreement with Denmark has been violently
+attacked, and attacked, as everyone admits who has seen it, without the
+slightest justification.  It is admitted that it does not give us all we
+would like to have; but, on the other hand, it is also admitted by those
+who have seen it that it gives us a good deal more than we could hope to
+obtain by other means short of what would be practically a declaration
+of war.
+
+And even the hotheads among us would shrink from telling either Holland
+or the Scandinavian countries that unless they surrender their rights
+and do as we wish, we should at once declare war upon them or
+practically force them to declare war upon us.  We need have no shadow
+of doubt what Germany would do if she wielded the power we do.  She
+would show, as she has shown, scant consideration for the rights of
+neutrals.  But, thank heaven! we are not Germany, and we fight with
+clean hands.
+
+We have to solve the problem of making our blockade as effectual as
+possible while paying scrupulous regard to the rights of others.  That
+problem is in process of solution; the importation of commodities into
+Germany is decreasing day by day; and if we are not at the end of our
+difficulties in this respect, we are at least drawing into sight of the
+achievement of our purpose.  And the more fully that purpose can be
+attained, the nearer draws the end of the great struggle and the
+emancipation of the civilised world from the dominion of brute force.
+
+CHAPTER THREE.
+
+THE COMING VICTORY ON LAND.
+
+No one in these days would seek to minimise the untold advantages which
+sea power confers upon those who wield it.
+
+But to say that England, supreme at sea, could conquer Germany while the
+latter was undefeated on land would be to stretch the doctrine of sea
+power very far beyond what is actually within the bounds of possibility.
+Very few people to-day hold the doctrines of sea power which were
+current coin only a few months ago.  That without sea power Germany
+could win a decisive victory over England is admittedly impossible.
+
+Without sea power greater than our own she can neither destroy our trade
+nor attempt an invasion of England with any prospect of success.  In the
+presence of the British Fleet any attempt to land on these shores
+sufficient forces to act with decisive effect would be impossible.  For
+such an undertaking Germany must secure command of the narrow seas, even
+though it might be for only a few days or even a few hours.
+
+Under existing conditions her sole chance of doing this would be to
+decoy our Fleet away from our home waters by a desperate dash of her own
+squadrons, trusting to be able to carry out a surprise landing on our
+shores in the interval--necessarily brief--in which she could hope to
+operate undisturbed.  That menace, however, is one to which the chiefs
+of our Navy are fully awake, and it is indeed a forlorn hope.
+
+Imagine Germany successful on land.  Could we defeat her through our
+undisputed command of the sea?  Personally I do not believe we could.
+In all probability she could under such circumstances obtain the
+supplies which would render her self-supporting, while at the same time
+doing a great trade with neutral nations or with her former antagonists
+over the land routes which we could not command.
+
+It is for this reason that the situation calls for the exercise of
+military power on the part of Britain on a scale never dreamed of in
+previous years.
+
+We may, I think, take it for granted that without the military as well
+as the naval assistance of Great Britain our Allies would have very
+little prospect of bringing the War to a successful conclusion.  It is
+the military power of England, growing gradually day by day, which in
+the end must turn the scale if the scale is to be turned.  It is true we
+have rendered to our Allies very much more than the measure of support
+which we promised them when we joined them to combat the peril which
+threatened all in common.  We have rendered the seas safe; we have
+already given assistance on land perhaps far beyond anything they either
+expected or had the right to ask.  Naturally, we make no special virtue
+of this; the fight is one of self-preservation for ourselves just as it
+is for France, Russia, and Italy.  We all share a common peril; all of
+us in common owe to the others the fullest mutual co-operation and
+effort.
+
+And upon us, just as much as upon our Allies, rests the duty of
+developing our fighting efficiency to the highest pitch of which the
+Empire is capable.  Nothing less than this will be sufficient to remove
+for all time the menace by which civilisation is faced.  Those who say
+that because Britain has gone beyond what she undertook to do it cannot
+be expected that she should do more are nothing less than traitors to
+the common cause.  We cannot bargain with our destiny.  And, assuredly,
+if we fail to measure the gravity of the situation, if we fail to put
+forth the whole energies of our people, destiny will take a terrible
+revenge.  Can it be, with the awful lessons of Belgium and Serbia before
+our eyes, that this nation will be satisfied with anything less than the
+maximum of effort in the prosecution of the War?
+
+Cost what it may, the final overthrow of Germany must be effected _on
+land_, and in the execution of that inflexible purpose Britain, whether
+she likes it or not, must play a leading part.  We have been for
+centuries a great naval Power; the day has dawned when we must become a
+great military Power as well.  We have, indeed, already become so in
+part.  We have raised armies on a scale which, before the War, neither
+our friends nor our enemies would have thought possible.  Without unduly
+flattering ourselves, we may claim to have done much; we shall yet do
+more and more until the power of Prussia is finally broken.  It is not
+enough that we should content ourselves, as some suggest, with supplying
+money and munitions to our Allies.
+
+We must take the field as a nation fighting for everything which makes
+life worth living.  To those who say that we cannot afford to raise
+larger armies than we have already raised, I would reply that if
+necessary the last of Britain's savings, the whole strength of her
+manhood, must be flung into the melting-pot of war.  And I am happy to
+think that at length the nation as a whole is showing a growing
+realisation of this undoubted fact.  We are fast getting over our
+preliminary troubles (which have lasted far too long); the entire nation
+is settling down in grim and deadly earnest to make an end once and for
+all of the German pretensions.  "Tear-'em is a good dog, but Holdfast is
+better," says the old saw, and we are to-day not far from the time when,
+not for the first time in the world's history, the silent, deadly,
+dogged determination of the British race will be a fact with which the
+entire world will have to reckon.  We are out to fight this War to a
+finish, and I am glad to think the nation as a whole has at last
+awakened to the grim facts of the situation.
+
+Those who are suggesting that the British Navy can by any means give the
+death-blow to German aim at world-domination are, I am convinced, doing
+the nation ill service.  Their argument is that because we are a naval
+Power we should be content with the exercise of our naval strength, and
+should not venture to embark on military operations on a scale for which
+our previous experience has not tended to fit us.  Counsels of this
+kind, however well intended, are a profound--they might well be a
+fatal--mistake.  They tend to deaden the brain and paralyse the arm of
+the Executive; they add to the terrible perils by which we are already
+surrounded.  More than this, they tend greatly to prolong the conflict
+and add immeasurably to the terrible toll of life and treasure which the
+War is extorting from all the nations who have the misfortune to be
+engaged in it.  Let us put aside once and for all the comfortable theory
+that as we have already done more than was expected of us there is no
+need for further exertions.
+
+There is a crying need for all that we can do, for more, indeed, than we
+can hope to do.
+
+To be sparing of effort in war is to be guilty of the greatest possible
+folly.  Moderation in war, as Lord Fisher is credited with saying, is
+imbecility; and it is infinitely cheaper in the long run to do a thing
+well than to half do it and, probably, have all the work to do over
+again under still more difficult circumstances, even if it can be done
+at all.  A glance at the record of the Dardanelles Expedition will show
+what I mean.
+
+And unless in this hour of supreme trial Britain is true to herself and
+to the great cause for which she and her Allies have unsheathed the
+sword, if she is content with less than the utmost effort of which she
+is capable, the historian of the future, looking backward across the
+centuries, will be able to place his finger unerringly upon the day and
+hour of which it will be possible to say, "Here the decline of the
+British Empire began."  Happily, indeed, for ourselves and civilisation
+at large the awakening spirit of our people is the best possible
+guarantee against any such disaster.
+
+As I said in my opening chapter, our mythical visitor from another
+planet, judging the progress of the War by the map only, might well be
+excused if he came to the conclusion that the Germans had already won so
+far as the land campaign was concerned.  Now this is precisely the
+mental position of the German people to-day.  They have been told, day
+by day and month by month, that Germany is everywhere victorious, and,
+speaking generally, they believe it.  Of course, a few of the more
+thoughtful and better informed are beginning to wonder why, if the
+constant tales of victory are true, they seem to be no nearer to the
+sight of peace.  But the German Government has to deal not with the
+well-informed few, but with the ill-informed many.
+
+So long as the mass of the people are prepared to believe what they are
+told, they will go on supplying the Government with the means of war,
+and, after all, that is no bad frame of mind for the conduct of a great
+struggle.
+
+No doubt the process of disillusionment, when it comes, will be all the
+more violent and painful, but at present we have to face the fact that a
+very large proportion of the German people believe that they are
+winning.  Up to recently they have shown that they are willing to put up
+with the shortage and distress which are growing in Germany, looking
+upon them as part of the price of victory.  But, as I shall show later,
+even this comfortable belief is beginning to break down before the stern
+logic of facts, and, as a result, chinks and cracks are appearing even
+in the iron wall of German patience and perseverance.  That those chinks
+and cracks will widen as time goes on is certain; and when the wall
+gives way, as it assuredly will, we shall see a catastrophe which will
+probably sweep away the German organisation as it exists to-day.
+
+Now let us consider for a moment the grounds upon which Germany assumes
+she has won the War.  She regards the whole field of the War on land as
+absolutely dominated by the German arms.  German armies have occupied
+practically the whole of Belgium, they have pushed their way far into
+France, they have occupied the whole of Poland and a considerable slice
+of Russia proper, they have overrun and devastated Serbia and
+Montenegro, have won control of the Balkans, and have opened up an
+uninterrupted way to Constantinople and the East.  But--and it is a very
+big "but" indeed--their one complete military success in the real sense
+of the word has been the destruction of the fighting power of
+Montenegro, the smallest and the weakest of their opponents!  Not even
+Serbia, properly speaking, has been destroyed as a fighting force, for
+at least half of the splendid Serbian Army is intact, and will take the
+field again as soon as it has rested and secured fresh equipment.
+
+As regards Germany's more powerful opponents, the only ones which count
+so far as the final decision of the War is concerned, they stand to-day
+not merely with their fighting efficiency unimpaired, but, taken as a
+whole, actually stronger than they were a year ago.  The huge armies
+which Britain is raising have not yet even taken the field; France is
+certainly no more weakened relatively than is Germany herself; Russia,
+recovering amazingly from her misfortunes, will soon be ready to strike
+new and harder blows; Italy is steadily, if slowly, pushing forward to
+the heart of her hereditary enemy.  Moreover, all are absolutely united
+and determined in the prosecution of the War.
+
+Yet in the face of these indisputable facts the Germans appear to be
+genuinely surprised that the Allies are not ready and willing to accept
+the preposterous "peace terms" which, in their arrogance, they have been
+good enough to put forward, through the usual "unofficial" channels, for
+acceptance.  It is a surprise to them that the Allies are not ready to
+confess that they are vanquished.  The fact is, of course, that they are
+not vanquished or anything like it.  They mean to go on, as Mr Asquith
+has said, until the military power of Prussia, the _fons et origo_ of
+the whole bloody struggle, is finally and completely destroyed.  And
+they have the means and the will to do it.  The fact that Germany has
+forced her way into so large an amount of the Allied territory is
+merely, in the eyes of the Allies, another reason why they should
+continue to fight, and a good reason why they should fight with growing
+hopes of ultimate success.
+
+Longer lines necessarily mean thinner lines, for the simple reason that
+Germany has reused her maximum of man-power, while the Allies have still
+large reserves as yet untouched.
+
+There we have the bedrock fact of the War, and no amount of boasting and
+bragging of German "victories" will alter it.  It signifies little or
+nothing that Germany shall have overrun the Balkans so long as she is
+open to a smashing blow in the West, which is, and must ever be to the
+end, the real heart of the War.  It is in France and Flanders that the
+final blow must come, and it will profit Germany nothing to hold
+Constantinople while the Allies are thundering at the crossing of the
+Rhine.
+
+If Germany had succeeded in her ambitious design to capture Paris or
+London or Petrograd, she might have reasonable excuse for some of the
+boasting which has filled the columns of her Press; she would have still
+more excuse if she had succeeded in destroying the armed forces of
+Britain or of France or of Russia.  But she has done none of these
+things.  Britain, France, Russia, and Italy are not merely still full of
+fight, they are growing stronger while she is growing weaker.  They are
+certainly not weakening as much as she is herself in the moral sense and
+in the capacity and determination to endure to the end.  And while I am
+no believer in the theory that a war can be won by sitting down and
+waiting for exhaustion to defeat the enemy, there can be no doubt of the
+fact that if the War resolves itself into a contest of endurance the
+Allies are at least as well equipped as the Germans to see this thing
+through to the end.
+
+We must never lose sight of the fact that the German thrust to the East
+is merely an expression of her uncomfortable consciousness that it is
+her last chance of breaking the blockade by land as well as by sea which
+is exercising such a strangling effect upon her.  Germany, as a fact, is
+in the position of a beleaguered garrison.  Unless she can break the
+ring around her she must inevitably perish.  If we bear this fact in
+mind, we shall be in a better position to appreciate at its real value
+the bearing of the German successes in the direction of Constantinople,
+and of her real motives in that adventure.  So far Germany is closely
+blockaded on three fronts--by the French and British, by the Italians,
+and by the Russians.  She can have no reasonable hope that she will be
+able to break the blockade in either of these directions; her efforts
+have already brought her disastrous failures and enormous losses.  By
+her success in the Balkans she has opened, for what they are worth,
+fresh sources of supplies; she has secured, again for what it is worth,
+the adhesion of Bulgaria; she has secured the neutrality of Greece, and,
+so far, of Rumania.  But she is not yet safe even here.  Salonica
+menaces her communications eastwards; and should the Allies take the
+offensive from this base, we ought to see the last of Germany's
+communications with the outer world, except through the neutral
+countries, finally closed.  Then, and then only, will the full influence
+of the sea power of the Allies begin to make itself felt with decisive
+results.
+
+The plain fact is that those who have decried the supposed inactivity of
+the British Fleet have failed to take into consideration the fact that
+the German successes on land have, to some extent, neutralised British
+successes afloat.  Germany had every reason to hope that our failure in
+the Gallipoli Peninsula would enable her to call upon the services of
+some half a million Turks and to secure fresh sources of supplies of
+food and raw material, not very great, perhaps, but still helpful; and
+in Serbia she has won what is of real value, a fresh supply of copper.
+If she could push through a really serviceable system of communication
+with Bagdad and the Persian Gulf, she would gain still more solid
+advantages, including, it might be, control of the British oil supplies
+in Persia.  But this hope has been utterly smashed by the great Russian
+victory at Erzerum.  I do not believe the German aims in these
+directions were immediate perils, but the Germans, as we know to our
+cost, take long views in matters of war, and the better we understand
+their aims the better will be our chance of countering them.  And in
+this case a full understanding of what Germany is aiming at provides us
+with a specially urgent reason for decisive action at the point where
+Germany can be hit the hardest.  This is unquestionably on the West
+front.
+
+The importance of closing at the earliest possible moment the gap in the
+blockade--the direct road from Berlin to Constantinople and Egypt and
+the East--is supreme, for Germany may very veil secure, if only for a
+time, complete control of Turkey.  The effect of our sea power is
+gravely weakened if Germany is able to draw the supplies of men and
+materials she needs through the Balkan countries.  We have to
+re-establish the barrier on the Eastern road with as little delay as
+possible, remembering that the Germans may be trusted to make the utmost
+of what must seem to our foes to be nothing less than a heaven-sent
+opportunity.  We know that already they have very completely looted
+Serbia of everything that could be of the slightest use to them, and we
+can be fairly confident that the process will be continued in Turkey and
+Bulgaria.
+
+It is for this reason that the Balkan area suddenly assumed such
+importance in the War.  So long as Germany keeps open the road to the
+East, so long is she obtaining reinforcements in men and supplies which
+enable her to prolong the War.
+
+There are a variety of plans open to us for the purpose of countering
+the latest German thrust for the open.  But it must be remembered that
+the majority of these partake too much of the nature of the "small
+packet" to be sound from a military and strategic point of view.  Most
+of our troubles in the present War have sprung from a diffusion of
+effort which has led us to dissipate our strength in a variety of local
+attacks which have missed the point at which a decisive blow could be
+dealt.
+
+We have over and over again been too weak at the critical point.  That
+is a danger which I trust will be guarded against in the future by the
+improved arrangements that have been made during the past few months for
+a better co-ordination of the joint plans of the Allies.  Joint
+simultaneous action by all the Allies, each on his own front, is one of
+the cardinal necessities for bringing the War to a successful
+conclusion; and unless this is attained we shall always be faced with
+the danger that Germany, having the advantage of operating on interior
+lines, will be able, thanks to the mobility afforded her by her
+magnificent system of railways, to meet and check, if not to defeat, her
+enemies in detail.
+
+It is an unhappy fact that so far there has been a lamentable lack of
+co-ordination between the Allies.  For some reason or another we have
+never been able to bring our preparations to fruition at the same
+moment.  Valuable steps have been taken of late, however, to bring about
+a better co-ordination of the Allies' plans, and there is therefore
+reason to hope that in the coming great struggle we shall see greater
+unity of action as well as more unity of control and direction.
+
+But whatever may be the success of our efforts in this direction I have
+not the least doubt that the West front will remain the decisive theatre
+of the War.  If the Germans are to be beaten, they will be beaten in the
+West; if we can score a great success there, we can with every
+confidence leave the Balkan imbroglio and the menace to Egypt and the
+East to settle itself.  A strong threat in the direction of the Rhine
+would bring the German armies westward as fast as express trains could
+carry them, would automatically open up the road across the Balkans from
+Salonica, and would at once enormously facilitate the Russian recovery
+of lost territory and an invasion of Germany from the East.
+
+Moreover, it would be a blow in the decisive direction, for, after all--
+and it cannot be too often repeated--it is on the Western front that the
+final victory will be won.
+
+Now there can be no doubt that the Germans themselves are fully
+conscious of this fact, and that they are taking the speediest measures
+to guard against the peril of a great attack by the Allies in the course
+of the coming months.  The Budapest correspondent of the _Morning Post_
+has given us invaluable information upon this point.  Great developments
+are expected in Austro-German military circles in the early spring, and
+preparations are being made to meet a tremendous onslaught by the Allies
+on three or four fronts.  One of the best informed military writers in
+Hungary, Monsieur Tibor Bakos, who is known to have exceptional sources
+of information, has stated that in the early spring the Allied Powers
+have decided to embark upon an offensive of unparalleled magnitude.
+This is the direct result of the steps that have been taken to establish
+a common military and diplomatic leadership and control among the
+Allies.  They know well in Vienna and Berlin that at a given moment the
+iron ring round the Central Empires will suddenly tighten at every
+point.
+
+"All the political leaders and generals of the Allies," says the writer,
+"are absolutely certain of a great and decisive victory, and their
+optimism as regards the final issue of the War is even more marked than
+it was in 1914, when the War began, and in the spring of 1915, when
+Italy joined the Entente."
+
+Now, assuming that a joint scheme of attack has been decided upon, where
+will these attacks be delivered?  That, of course, is the secret of our
+military leaders; but, within certain lines, there is ground for a
+reasonable forecast.  And first and foremost comes the battle-ground in
+the West.  In this direction Champagne and Artois seem clearly marked
+out.  The Russians may be expected to move on both wings of their long
+lines--in the south with the idea of joining hands with the French and
+British across the Balkans and of convincing Rumania, and in the north
+to complete a turning movement which shall drive back the German centre.
+On the Italian front the line of the Isonzo seems to be indicated.
+
+As supplementary but still important movements we shall probably see
+shrewd blows struck across Macedonia and at Turkey in the Caucasus, and
+perhaps elsewhere.  Indeed, the blow at Erzerum has come since these
+lines were penned.
+
+On the other hand, we have to remember that the Germans may anticipate
+our blows at any or all of these points.  What are the prospects of
+success for us or for our enemies?
+
+Now we are assured by those who ought to know that the strength of the
+Allies in men and munitions is greater than that of the enemy.  We are
+assured that our supplies of shells are now fully adequate, and it is a
+remarkable fact that a writer in a leading American magazine has stated
+recently that we are no longer ordering shells from the United States.
+We know that we and the French have vast supplies of guns.  Can we, with
+all these advantages, break decisively the German lines in the West,
+which the enemy professes to regard as impregnable?
+
+I believe we can, and I believe it is in the West that the real and most
+deadly blow will come.  No doubt it will be coupled with strong action
+elsewhere, but I have seen and heard nothing to shake my conviction that
+here must be the real settlement of the War.  Given ample supplies of
+men and guns and ammunition, I believe we have commanders who are
+capable of driving the enemy out of his strong entrenchments from the
+North Sea to the Swiss frontier, who are capable of forcing the crossing
+of the Rhine and carrying the War into the enemy's territory.  And we
+must always remember that Germany is peculiarly sensitive to invasion.
+We know something of the panic that was caused by the Russian advance
+into East Prussia in the early days of the War.  And since then the
+Germans have begun to fear that in the event of invasion the measure
+that they have meted out to those they had in their power will in turn
+be meted out to themselves.  They have, in fact, a bad conscience, and
+they fear the vengeance of their foes.
+
+In this, as in all other wars, one is faced with the fact that the
+written word of to-day may be falsified by the events of to-morrow, but
+as I write there is every indication that we are on the eve of a renewal
+of the great struggle which shall go far to decide on the Western front
+the issue of the War.  Already we hear the mutterings which prelude the
+breaking of the storm.  We hear of German guns and reinforcements
+hurrying westward, we know that our own commanders are not idle, we know
+that the "deadlock" is more apparent than real, and that in war, as in
+everything else, nothing ever really stands still.  Every day that
+passes helps us or our enemies.  We cannot say that the coming struggle
+will give us all we seek; we know that in any event we have many days of
+trial and grievous loss before us.  But we have good grounds for hope.
+Our people are united and determined to an extent to which we have
+hitherto been strangers.
+
+We know that everything has been done to fit our troops to play their
+great part in what may well be the final act of Armageddon.  We know
+they are resolute and of good courage.  And if the coming great battle
+of the West, of which to-day we hear and see the signs, prove, as it
+well may, the most terrible conflict which this old earth has ever
+witnessed, we can look forward with calm confidence to the outcome, for
+we believe that Britain and France, united and determined, confident in
+the justice of their cause, will be far more than a match for any effort
+our enemies can make either in offence or defence.  If we can secure
+united and simultaneous action by all the Allies, it is my firm belief
+that before the year is out we shall have set our advancing feet on the
+road which leads to Berlin and victory.
+
+CHAPTER FOUR.
+
+OUR MASTERY OF THE AIR.
+
+The story of the British air service in the days before the War is so
+characteristically English that I must give a few lines to it if only to
+make quite clear the realisation of what we have done to meet the new
+dangers which, as usual, caught us unprepared.
+
+We exhibited as a nation a most regrettable reluctance to comprehend the
+value of the aeroplane and the airship as a means of making war.
+
+We failed utterly to grasp the fact that with the coming of the
+aeroplane a new factor had entered into military science, just as, in
+the early days of the submarine, we neglected the new invention until we
+had lagged behind other nations to an extent that, under different
+circumstances, might well have proved disastrous.  We made a few feeble
+and futile efforts in aeroplane construction; we dallied tentatively
+with airships of a microscopic pattern.  The flying wing of the Army was
+half starved, and the advice and remonstrances of the men who had really
+studied and understood the subject were cold-shouldered by the
+authorities to whom everything new and revolutionary was--and too often
+is--anathema.
+
+I have studied the progress of aviation from the time when I acted as a
+judge at the first Aviation Meeting held in this country--on Doncaster
+racecourse.  It may perhaps be remembered that in the early days of
+flying, when the _Daily Mail_ offered a prize of 10,000 pounds for the
+first flight from London to Manchester, a misguided evening journal
+derisively offered a prize of a million pounds for the first man who
+flew, I think, ten miles.
+
+No doubt the sneer was inspired partly by professional jealousy of the
+_Daily Mail_, but it revealed, in very striking fashion, the mental
+attitude, shared unfortunately by our military authorities, of those who
+refused to see in the new arm anything more than a very complicated,
+useless, and dangerous toy.
+
+Time has slipped along since Sommer, Le Blon, and Cody flew at
+Doncaster; the pioneers of aviation persisted in their efforts, and
+within three years of the _Daily Mail's_ offer being made the prize had
+been won.  Tremendous progress was made in every department of flying,
+and the keener students of military affairs realised that in the
+aeroplane there had arrived a weapon, both of offence and defence, which
+would go far to revolutionise warfare as it had been understood in the
+past.
+
+None the less, our Army lagged far behind the rest of the world.  Either
+the War authorities were not sufficiently insistent, or the Treasury
+turned a deaf ear to their appeals for money for the development of the
+new science.
+
+The result was that while our French friends and our German enemies--for
+they were our enemies even then, as we have now good reason to know--
+were pushing ahead with aerial investigation and securing a lead which
+might well have been fatal to us, the British air service languished in
+comparative neglect.  It is certainly hardly too much to say that but
+for the assistance given by the _Daily Mail_ flying in England would
+have been utterly and totally neglected.  The result was what might have
+been expected, and the outcome was characteristically British.
+
+When the War broke out we were in a condition of decided inferiority to
+the French fliers--that perhaps mattered little, as we were fighting on
+the same side--and very much behindhand in relation to Germany, which
+mattered a great deal.  We had to make up in quality--and of the quality
+of our airmen there was happily no question--what we lacked in
+equipment.  We were entirely without airships comparable in any way to
+the Zeppelins, and we had nothing like the number of the German
+"Tauben."  Most happily for us the quality of our airmen proved far
+beyond anything which Germany possesses, and in the matter of men we
+took at once, and have since held, a commanding lead.
+
+It was not long before the value of the new arm was signally
+demonstrated.  In all probability the fate of the British Army in the
+early days of the War was decided by air reconnaissance.  It was one of
+the air scouts who discovered the enormous concentration of German
+troops before Sir John French's army, and thus gave the timely warning
+which made the great retreat from Mons a possibility.
+
+What followed reproduced in striking fashion the early history of the
+submarine, and proved very clearly that our deficiencies in the matter
+of aircraft were not due to any defect in personnel or energy or
+inventiveness.  Striking advances were made when the obvious
+requirements of the War became manifest.
+
+Money, of course, had to be poured out like water, and no doubt we spent
+a great deal more than would have been necessary had we made due
+preparation in time of peace.  But, at any rate, thanks to the British
+genius for improvisation, the work was done.  Men and machines were soon
+forthcoming in ever-increasing numbers, and it was not many months
+before Sir John French was able to announce that our airmen had
+established a definite personal ascendency over the airmen of the enemy.
+That ascendency has been fully maintained.
+
+Man for man and machine for machine we lead the Germans in the matter of
+flight, so far at least as the aeroplane is concerned.  German losses in
+aerial conflict have been very much heavier than our own, a fact that is
+not surprising when the personal equation is taken into consideration.
+In natural daring and personal initiative--two of the qualities
+indispensable to the successful airman--the French and the British
+characters are far superior to the German.  We can look forward with
+complete confidence to any comparison that can be made between the rival
+air services so far as the heavier-than-air machines are concerned.
+
+A good deal has been said lately about the new German Fokker machine,
+and there has been a good deal of loose talk as to its formidable
+possibilities.  As a matter of fact, its wonders appear to have been
+very much exaggerated, for it is only a powerful engine put into an
+obsolete type of French machine.  It is not without significance that it
+is designed for purely defensive purposes, and is absolutely forbidden
+to cross the German lines under any circumstances whatever.  It is a
+very small, very heavily engined monoplane, carrying a formidable gun,
+and for short distances capable of very swift climbing and very high
+speed.
+
+For its own special purpose it is undoubtedly a first-class engine of
+war, but that it has met its match in the British and French
+battle-planes was clearly shown during a recent raid on Freiburg.
+During that raid, a great part of which was over enemy territory, the
+fighting machines which acted as escorts to the bombers fought no fewer
+than ten battles with the Fokkers and Aviatiks; and when we remember
+that the only aeroplane of the Allies to be lost out of the entire
+squadron was compelled to descend through engine trouble, we can easily
+understand that highly exaggerated reports as to the efficiency of the
+rule-of-thumb Fokker had by some means got into circulation.  In all
+probability they arose from the comparatively numerous victims among our
+flying men claimed by the German official news just after the Fokker
+made its appearance.  But the reason for the seeming disproportion in
+numbers was very simple.  We were constantly the attacking party; in
+other words, our airmen were constantly over the German lines, while the
+Germans, as far as they could, gave our lines a very wide berth.  The
+following figures, quoted in the House of Commons by Mr Tennant, are
+illuminating.  They relate to four weeks' fighting on the Western front,
+practically all of which had taken place in German territory:
+
+  British machines lost, 13.
+  Enemy machines brought down, 9.
+  Enemy machines probably brought down, 2.
+  British bombing raids, 6.
+  Enemy bombing raids, 13.
+  British machines used, 138.
+  Enemy machines used, about 20.
+  Machines flown across enemy lines, 1227.
+  Enemy machines flown across our lines (estimated), 310.
+
+Now we need not go farther than these figures to see that the apparently
+heavier British losses are due not to any superiority on the German
+side, but to the enormously greater risks taken by our men.  They are
+constantly flying over the German lines, whereas the German airman
+appears--probably with good reason--to keep to the comparative safety of
+his own territory, where he is protected by the German anti-aircraft
+guns.  And that when it comes to actual combat in the air the British
+battle-plane has little to fear from the Fokker is shown by the
+experience of one of our airmen who single-handed fought a duel with
+three Fokkers and brought them all down.  Moreover, we have always to
+remember that when a battle is fought the defeated Fokker comes to earth
+in German territory, and we cannot definitely count it as destroyed,
+whereas if one of our machines is brought down the Germans are always as
+sure of it as we are.
+
+Another factor which shows how great an advantage we have over the enemy
+in the matter of the air service is revealed by the comparative failure
+of German bombing attacks and the havoc that has been wrought by the
+French and British squadrons.  Leaving the Zeppelin raids for the moment
+out of the question, there can be no difference of opinion that the
+Allies' air raids have been enormously the more destructive, not in the
+matter of the sacrifice of civilian life--pre-eminence in that regard is
+easily claimed by the Huns--but in the havoc wrought on military
+objectives.
+
+When we turn to the dirigible airship--the lighter-than-air machine--the
+comparison at first sight seems hopelessly against us.  We have nothing
+that can be compared to the Zeppelin in either speed or power of
+destruction.  We have, it is true, a number of airships of different
+types, but experience so far has not shown that they are of great, if of
+any, practical value.  Our military authorities have deliberately pinned
+their faith to the aeroplane, and so far as this War is concerned it
+would appear that we are hopelessly outclassed in the matter of
+airships.
+
+But we must not allow ourselves to be deceived by appearances.  We must
+not fail to take into consideration the fact that so far as its real
+military value is concerned the Zeppelin has shown itself to be an
+absolute and costly failure.  This may seem at first sight a hard saying
+when we think of the many victims of the Zeppelin raids, of the women
+and little children slaughtered, of the civilians murdered in midnight
+raids whose lives against any opponents with the slightest regard for
+the laws of war or for their own good name would have been absolutely
+safe.
+
+But the facts cannot be disputed.  The Zeppelin is a murder machine pure
+and simple.  Its military value is absolutely negligible, and the
+destruction it has wrought has been of no military significance
+whatever.  Out of all the victims it has claimed during its frequent
+nocturnal expeditions here and in France, only the barest handful have
+been soldiers, and on none of the raids has any military base sustained
+the slightest damage.  Moreover, it has failed in its avowed object of
+terrorising; neither our own people nor the French have been weakened--
+rather have they been strengthened--in their determination to carry on
+the War to the only issue consistent with the future existence of
+civilisation.  The only real and tangible results of the Zeppelin raids
+from a military point of view have been to cover the Germans with a
+stigma of crime and murder for which they will pay dearly in the future,
+and to make the Allies more than ever determined to root out the nest of
+vermin which for so long has troubled Europe.  They have done more,
+perhaps, than anything else except the infamous submarine campaign to
+convince the civilised world that so long as Germany retains her power
+of mischief there will be no peace for the nations at large.
+
+There is no disguising the fact, however, that, for what it is worth,
+the Zeppelin for the moment holds the field.
+
+We have not yet succeeded in discovering any means either of keeping the
+raiders away when the conditions are favourable for their visits, or of
+dealing effectively with them when their presence is detected.
+Undoubtedly the problem is a very difficult one.  Zeppelins can fly so
+high that gunfire is practically ineffective against them, as has been
+proved in the raids on both Paris and London; the one recently brought
+down by the French was flying much lower than usual.  They are able to
+take very effective cover behind any clouds that may be about, and the
+difficulties by which the aeroplanes are faced in locating and attacking
+them at night appear to be well-nigh insuperable under present
+conditions.  In time, perhaps, we shall have fleets of powerful
+aeroplanes which will be able to take the air and not merely rise
+swiftly to the height at which the Zeppelin flies, but remain aloft all
+night, if need be, until the dangers inseparable from a landing in the
+dark have disappeared.
+
+But it must not be forgotten that the very factors which give the
+Zeppelin its invulnerability against attack practically destroy its
+value as a fighting machine.  No one--not even the commanders of the
+Zeppelins themselves--would pretend that, flying at a height of 12,000
+feet or so on a dark and cloudy night, they can say with certainty where
+they are, or that they can drop their murderous bombs with any sure hope
+of hitting an object which would be their justification from a military
+point of view.  They simply wait until they think they are over an
+inhabited area, and then drop their bombs in the hope of killing as many
+people as possible, or, perhaps, luckily striking some material object
+and doing real damage.  That is not war as the civilised world
+understands it, but simply anarchism.
+
+A distinguished writer recently expressed the opinion that as the
+Germans were essentially a practical people they would not waste effort
+by dropping at haphazard bombs which they had been at such pains to
+carry to this country, and that they must therefore be genuinely under
+the impression that they were doing real military damage.  But their
+whole record in the War entirely disposes of this theory.  We know quite
+well--the Germans have told us so, and their acts have borne out their
+words--that the policy of "frightfulness" commends itself to their
+judgment.  Their one idea is to terrify; they hope to do enough damage
+and kill enough people to bring about in England a movement for peace.
+Nothing but defeat will convince them that they are wrong.
+
+And this consideration brings me naturally to another--the subject of
+reprisals.  If we cannot stop the Zeppelins coming or deal with them
+adequately when they are here, can we teach the Germans a lesson which
+will convince them that two can play at the game of "frightfulness," and
+that in the long run we can play that game better than they can
+themselves?  I think we can, and I think we should.
+
+It has been one of the most striking characteristics of the career of
+Lord Rosebery that on more than one occasion he has put into terse and
+vigorous expression the opinions of the great majority of the English
+people.  With all his apparent detachment, Lord Rosebery has a wonderful
+understanding of what England is saying, and still more what it is
+thinking, and the reader will call to mind more than one occasion on
+which the nebulous and only half-expressed thought of England has been
+suddenly crystallised in the clearest fashion through the mouth of Lord
+Rosebery.  This has unmistakably been the case in the matter of the
+Zeppelin raids.
+
+In a recent letter to _The Times_, dated February 3, Lord Rosebery put
+the English point of view with his customary clearness and directness.
+He wrote:
+
+  This last Zeppelin raid has cleared the air.  There may be
+  difficulties from the aircraft point of view in reprisals.  I am not
+  behind the scenes, and I do not know.  But as regards policy there can
+  be none.  We have too long displayed a passive and excessive patience.
+
+  We all remember Grey's noble lines, "To scatter plenty o'er a smiling
+  land."  For "plenty" read "bombs" and you have the Prussian ideal.  To
+  scatter bombs over a countryside, to destroy indiscriminately the
+  mansion and the cottage, the church and the school, to murder
+  unoffending civilians, women, children, and sucklings in their beds--
+  these are the noble aspirations of Prussian chivalry, acclaimed by
+  their nation as deeds of merit and daring.
+
+  Let them realise their triumph.  Let us bring it directly to their
+  hearts and homes.  Let us unsparingly mete out their measure to
+  themselves.  Nothing else will make them realise their glories.  And
+  the blood of any who may suffer will rest on their Government, not on
+  ours.
+
+I am firmly convinced that in that letter Lord Rosebery expressed not
+merely what the great mass of the English people are thinking and saying
+to-day, but that he expressed a great and real truth.
+
+In the early days of the War it was the fashion here in England to
+affect to believe that we were at war not with the German people--
+represented by the pro-Germans in our midst as a kindly, harmless, and
+industrious lot of folks--but with the mysterious "military caste" who
+were supposed to have usurped all authority, and to be driving the
+delightful German people at large into the commission of all kinds of
+bestial outrages which were entirely foreign to their wholly delightful
+nature.  I should imagine that fiction has long gone by the board.  We
+have seen the "delightful" German nation sent into paroxysms of inhuman
+glee by such outrages as the sinking of the "Lusitania"; we have seen
+them time and again savagely gloating over the slaughter of men, women,
+and children by their murderous Zeppelins; and if those savage outbursts
+of delight have done nothing else, we have at least to thank them for
+teaching us the lesson that we are at war with the entire German nation,
+and that between that nation and the civilised world there is a great
+gulf fixed which in our time at least will not be bridged over.
+
+Do we owe any consideration to such a nation?  Do we owe to them any of
+the chivalry and honourable forbearance which we have shown, not once,
+but a thousand times, in our long contests with civilised adversaries on
+a hundred fields in all parts of the world?  Are our hands to be tied
+and our people to suffer through our adherence to creeds of warfare
+which the Huns evidently regard--as they regard Christianity itself--as
+a lot of worn-out shibboleths?
+
+I say emphatically "No," and I say the time has come when we should take
+steps, in Lord Rosebery's words, to bring home the triumphs of the
+Zeppelins to German hearts and German homes.
+
+It is too much the fashion in this country to look upon the German as a
+stolid individual with nerves of steel, who is not to be shaken from his
+serenity by any of the trials which would bear hardly upon ordinary
+mortals.  There never was a greater mistake.  I am quite ready to admit
+that the German can look unmoved upon a great deal of suffering in other
+people--that is a characteristic of bullies of all nations; and if the
+German has not shown himself to be a super-man, he has at least
+convinced the world that he is the super-bully _in excelsis_.  And the
+only argument that appeals to him is force, naked and unashamed.  In his
+heart of hearts he knows it.  That is why he believes that England
+to-day is cowering in impotent terror under the menace of the Zeppelins,
+because he knows that is exactly what he would be doing himself if the
+positions were reversed, and he cannot understand other people who are
+built on very different lines.  We know how one of the early raids on
+Freiburg produced an instant panic flight of every German who could
+afford to get away from a district which had suddenly become
+"unhealthy."
+
+Now we have it in our power to reproduce that panic in a dozen German
+towns within easy reach of our lines in France.  And we know something
+of the real effects of a bombardment by one of the Allied squadrons.  In
+the recent raid on Petrich only fourteen French aeroplanes took part.
+Yet the Bulgarians officially admitted that they sustained a thousand
+casualties--far more than we have suffered in the twenty odd Zeppelin
+raids on England.
+
+Surely it is high time we made it clearly known that any repetition of
+the bombardment of an unfortified area would be followed by reprisals of
+the most merciless nature.  We can imagine what the effect would be of a
+big British or French squadron of aeroplanes pelting the German frontier
+towns with a hail of high explosive and incendiary shells.  Assuredly
+the Zeppelin raids on England would seem futile in comparison.  And just
+as assuredly it would bring home to the German nation as nothing else
+ever will that the policy of "frightfulness" in which they have elected
+to indulge is one which will call down upon them a richly deserved
+punishment.  I believe that, speaking generally, the entire world would
+approve of our action if we decided to take such measures of reprisals
+as German crimes call for.  The responsibility would be Germany's, not
+ours.  We have fought, as our French Allies have fought, with clean
+hands.
+
+I believe that stern punishment of this nature is the only possible
+means of putting an end to the German campaign of murder, and it is for
+that reason that I advocate it without the slightest hesitation or
+compunction.  The idea of those who believe that reprisals are called
+for is not to punish the Germans so much as to convince them of the
+error of their ways and to protect our own people.  I believe that our
+air squadrons could set up such a reign of terror in the Rhine towns
+that even in Germany the demand for the only possible measure of
+protection--the cessation of the air raids on unfortified places in
+France and England--would become irresistible.  The German Government
+may continue to delude the German people about events that are happening
+outside Germany; they could not by any possibility hide the facts if the
+air war were effectively carried on to German soil.
+
+Further, I firmly believe that half a dozen smashing aerial attacks upon
+German towns and cities would do more to put a stop to Germany's
+unending infraction of all the laws of civilised warfare than the futile
+notes and protests of President Wilson have effected in a twelvemonth.
+
+It will be objected by those who seek to make war in kid gloves that if
+we carry out these raids German women and children must inevitably
+suffer.  I do not shrink from the conclusion, though I regret the
+necessity which has been forced upon us by the Germans themselves.  I am
+not at all ashamed to say that one little English baby dead in the arms
+of its weeping mother, killed not by the accident of warfare, but of
+set, savage, and deliberate purpose, far outweighs in my mind any
+sentimental or humanitarian considerations for our enemies.  We should
+have no ground of complaint if the Germans confined their raids to
+proper military objects; and if, in the course of those raids, civilians
+were accidentally killed, that would be one of the penalties of being at
+war, and we should be justified in asking our people to bear their
+sorrows with what fortitude they could.  The case is widely different
+when men, women, and children are slain in a foul campaign of insensate
+murder; and I say again that in self-defence we are entitled to throw
+mere sentiment to the winds and protect ourselves by any means in our
+power.  And the best means of protection we have against these murderous
+raids is to hit the Hun in the same way, to give him a taste of his own
+medicine; in the words of Lord Rosebery, to bring his triumph directly
+to his heart and his home.  Thus, and thus only, we shall convince the
+German people, and through them the German militarists, that in the long
+last it does not pay to outrage the conscience of civilisation.
+
+To sum up, I think it is certainly true to say that in the domain of the
+air the Allies have established and can maintain a definite superiority
+over the enemy.  That they have established it is plain; that they can
+maintain it is, I think, equally plain, because they have the larger
+resources, and because successful aerial work calls for the exercise of
+qualities which both the French and the English possess in a far more
+marked degree than do the Germans.  Our air raids have been far more
+destructive from the military point of view than anything the enemy has
+been able to accomplish; they have been better devised and more capably
+carried out by men who were better fitted for the task they had in hand.
+It remains to be seen whether the German superiority in the
+lighter-than-air machines will give them any real advantage.
+
+At present all the arguments point to the greater value of the aeroplane
+upon which the Allies have pinned their faith.  In any case, it is too
+late, probably, for us to take up the question of airship construction
+with any hope of making effective use of it during the present War, and
+we must do the best we can with what we believe to be the superior
+weapon.  My own view is that on the whole the superiority of the Allies
+is fully assured, and that now and to the end the credit of winning the
+War in the air will and must remain with us.
+
+CHAPTER FIVE.
+
+BRITAIN'S UNSHAKABLE RESOLVE.
+
+This War has brought many changes, and will bring many more.  But it has
+brought one for which we cannot be too grateful, one which we may even
+think in the days to come was the justification and the reward for all
+the lives and all the treasure which the great struggle has demanded and
+will yet demand from us.
+
+It has made of us one people.  And when I say one people, I am not
+referring merely to the inhabitants of these small islands, which
+Britons all the world over will ever regard, as they have ever regarded,
+as "home."  I include the great dominions over the seas--Australia,
+Canada, South Africa, New Zealand, and India, with their many races and
+many people who live and enjoy their lives under the benign shelter of
+the British flag.
+
+Nothing the world has ever seen is equal in grandeur, and in the lesson
+it has taught us, to the majestic uprising of the British peoples when
+the first shock of war burst upon a startled world in those early days--
+how long ago they seem to-day!--of August, 1914.  From the Tropics to
+the Poles not a dissentient voice was heard.  It is not too much to say
+that the entire British Empire, which many of us had perhaps come to
+regard as somewhat a shadowy entity, leaped to arms with a unanimity
+which not only surprised us, but, as we have every reason to know,
+startled and bewildered our enemies.
+
+Of our own people here at home we were always sure, provided they could
+be induced to realise the magnitude of the great struggle before them.
+Of that, from the earliest days of the violation of Belgium, there was
+never the slightest doubt.  The British people are, and have always
+been, peculiarly sensitive to the sanctity of their pledged word; not
+for nothing have we earned the reputation that the Englishman's word is
+as good as his bond.  And when our people realised that Germany, with a
+cynical disregard of international honour and good faith to which
+history happily offers few parallels, had deliberately attacked Belgium,
+there was at once an explosion of cold rage which, could the Germans but
+have understood it, would have convinced them that the British Empire
+was in this War, for good or ill, until a final settlement had been
+reached which would mean either absolute triumph or absolute
+annihilation.
+
+We know, as a matter of fact, that England's decision to fight over a
+"scrap of paper" produced something akin to stupefaction in Berlin; we
+know also that it produced an outburst of hate which found its ultimate
+expression in the fatuous "Gott strafe England" which has become the
+by-word of the world as an expression of impotent rage and spite.  We
+may take that as the greatest compliment an honest nation has ever
+received from a people to whom such a thing as honour and good faith is
+not only unknown, but is unimaginable.  Knowing nothing of national
+honour themselves, the Germans were naturally unable to forecast
+accurately the course of action of either Belgium or Britain.  From both
+of them they have received a much-needed lesson, which I have no doubt
+will be still further driven home by the stern logic of the events which
+are even now shaping dimly before our eyes.
+
+It was just this consideration of national honour which brought not only
+England in particular, but the whole Empire, into the field as one man.
+Great armies sprang into existence before our very eyes.  From every
+quarter of the globe offers of men, money, and supplies of all kinds
+were poured into our lap with a profusion which was as surprising as it
+was gratifying.  We witnessed, in fact, what required a great national
+peril to bring to birth, the nascence of the British Empire as a
+fighting force.  And anyone who fails to see that that fact will have a
+very profound influence upon the future history of the world must be
+blind indeed to the real significance of events.
+
+The Empire has found itself.  That is the one cardinal lesson which,
+above all others, stands out as the greatest feature of the world-war.
+Will anyone believe that Germany, with all the advantages she possesses
+in the matter of organisation and long preparation for war, could in the
+long last vanquish Britain, solidly united, armed to the teeth, her
+deficiencies at last made good, and ready to shed the last drop of her
+blood and spend her last shilling in defence of the glorious heritage
+which has been won in a thousand years of strife and struggle?  If she
+stood alone to-day, without a single Ally in the world, Britain would
+never give up the struggle which has been thrust upon her.  But she is
+not alone.  She has powerful Allies who are as resolute as she is
+herself, who realise as fully as she does all that is implied in the
+threat of German domination, and who are as fully determined as she that
+"the Prussian ulcer" shall be cut once and for all from the body politic
+of civilisation.
+
+Dealing for a moment with Great Britain alone, I do not hesitate to here
+say that our people are united in this great quarrel as they have never
+been united before.
+
+In our other wars we have always had parties, more or less strong, but
+never negligible, which seemed to see in the enemy an object for
+friendship more attractive than our own people.  We have always had
+parties which, if not openly, at least covertly, seemed to incline to
+the side of our foes.  We all remember the South African campaign, when
+a very large and influential section of the Liberal Party went out of
+its way to champion the cause of Paul Kruger.
+
+We do not need--and I have no desire--to dwell upon that unhappy time;
+many of those who then made a great mistake have to-day atoned for their
+error by their splendid efforts to vindicate the cause of Britain and
+civilisation in the present struggle.  I mention the fact only to show
+that to-day there is no pro-German party in this country which carries
+the slightest weight.  The pro-German element is conspicuous by its
+absence; it is represented only by a small rabble of discredited cranks
+and self-advertisers for whom the nation has shown its contempt in
+unmistakable fashion.  The heart of the nation as a whole is sound, and
+it is firmly determined that Germany's eternal attempts to annoy and
+provoke her neighbours shall be once and for all suppressed.
+
+I shall deal elsewhere with Germany's colossal blunders in regard to the
+War; I will content myself with saying here that her first and greatest
+mistake was in regard to the British Empire.  She did not think we would
+fight, but if we did she thought there would be revolution in Ireland
+and India, and a sudden dropping off of our Colonial Dominions, leaving
+us so weak and so torn with internal dissensions that we should be in no
+shape to oppose her triumphal progress over the bodies of her enemies.
+
+Over three million volunteers have rallied to the Colours in reply to
+the German challenge.  Ireland to-day, dropping all her historic feuds,
+is practically solid for the Empire, and her sons, as ever, have shown
+their glorious deeds under the British flag.  India, with one voice and
+heart, has rallied to the Empire; her men have given their blood without
+stint in our cause, her princes have poured out their treasure like
+water in our service, proud and glad to make what return they could for
+the blessings they have enjoyed under British rule.  The deeds of the
+Canadians, the Australians, the New Zealanders, have added a new and
+imperishable tradition to British history.  The bloodstained soil of the
+Gallipoli Peninsula will remain for all time hallowed by the glory of
+the men of Anzac, who, not once, but time and again, wrested seemingly
+impossible triumphs from the very jaws of death and defeat.
+
+They failed, it is true, to win the last and greatest victory, but the
+story of their failure is more glorious than the story of many
+successes, and so long as our race and our language endure the tale of
+the landing at Suvla and the fight for the heights overlooking the
+Dardanelles will be told as an example of what human flesh and blood can
+achieve and endure.  There is nothing greater or nobler in all our
+history; and while our Empire can produce such men as those who for long
+months faced the Turks in Gallipoli, we can be sure that in the British
+Empire the world will have a force to be reckoned with.
+
+Turn to South Africa.  There were those among us who felt after the Boer
+War that Britain was making a dangerous experiment in conferring
+absolute self-government upon those who but a short time before had been
+our implacable enemies.  But the result was a triumph for British
+principles of liberty and of trust in the essential justice and equity
+of our rule.  From the first, General Botha, our ablest and most
+chivalrous antagonist in the war, showed absolute and unshakable loyalty
+to the people who had put their trust in him.  He was followed nobly by
+the great mass of the people of South Africa, Dutch as well as English;
+and when De Wet's misguided rebellion broke out it was suppressed with a
+swift efficiency which elicited unstinted admiration, not unmixed, it
+must be admitted, with surprise.  Later we were to see the Union of
+South Africa playing a gallant part in the expulsion of German rule from
+the adjoining territories.
+
+All this surely must have been a bitter pill for the Kaiser to swallow.
+We know how he encouraged Kruger in his revolt against the British; we
+know how confidently he had counted on disaffection in South Africa to
+add to our difficulties; we can imagine his joy when De Wet and his
+irreconcilables raised the standard of revolt, even though their motive
+was much more hostility to the English than love for the German.
+
+We know he looked upon Ireland as hopelessly disloyal and ready to fling
+off for ever, perhaps with German help, the hated yoke of the Saxon.  We
+know he looked upon India as seething with discontent and eager to fling
+herself into the arms of anyone who would give a hand in ejecting the
+brutal British Raj.  We know he looked upon our Dominions as ripe fruit
+ready to drop off the parent tree at the slightest shake.  We know he
+looked upon ourselves as a decadent nation, grown rich and indolent,
+caring for nothing but ease, and wrapped in a sloth from which we could
+never awaken until it was too late.  And, lo! upon the first touch of
+war the weapons he had hoped to use shivered to fragments in his hand,
+the hopes he had fondly entertained turned to Dead Sea ashes in his
+mouth.
+
+With one heart, one mind, and one unshakable purpose, the British Empire
+rushed to war.  Swept away in an instant were those bad old party
+squabbles, those bad old party cries, with which our nation is prone to
+amuse itself in times of peace to the exclusion, perhaps, of more vital
+things.  We seemed so desperately in earnest about our internal quarrels
+that perhaps we could not expect the continental nations, least of all
+the Germans, to realise that, for all our dispute, we are still one
+nation, that we are still animated by precisely the same spirit that has
+made England great, overlain though it may be by the dust and cobwebs
+that have grown up in a century of freedom from war on a great scale.
+
+We do not perhaps quite understand ourselves; it would be certainly too
+much to expect the Germans to understand us, for they have shown an
+utter inability to understand any type of mentality but their own.  Had
+they been better acquainted with our idiosyncrasies, I do not say that
+war would have been averted, but it would certainly have been postponed
+until Germany felt herself to be still stronger afloat and ashore, when
+the task of defeating her would have been even harder and more
+prolonged.  So that perhaps we have reason to be thankful that, as the
+struggle had to come--and of that there cannot be the slightest doubt--
+it should have come early rather than late; we may have reason to be
+thankful, despite all the miseries and losses which the War has caused,
+that it was prematurely precipitated by German arrogance and greed and
+blindness.  How much greater would have been her chances of success if
+she had been content to wait for, say, another five or ten years, when
+her prospects of meeting the British Fleet on something like equal terms
+would have been vastly improved!
+
+And if our nation has closed its ranks and determined that this War
+shall be fought to the only finish consistent with the continued
+existence of civilisation as we understand it, what shall we say of our
+Allies?  What tribute can be too great for the matchless heroism of
+France?  How can we praise too highly the dogged courage of the Russian
+soldier, which has time and again saved the situation in the West by a
+display of self-sacrifice of which the world can offer few parallels?
+
+What words can express all we owe to gallant little Serbia and
+Montenegro, crushed beneath the heel of the invader, yet destined to
+arise with their lustre undimmed and shining brighter than ever?  How
+can we show our appreciation of what Belgium, the greatest martyr of
+all, has done for the sacred cause of liberty?  Who can measure our debt
+to Italy, flinging herself into the great battle of freedom, not at a
+time when victory seemed assured, but when the clouds were thickest and
+our hopes at their lowest ebb?
+
+Can we detect any sign of weakening in the Allies' stern resolve?
+Assuredly not.  Bound together by a sacred pact to make no terms with
+the enemy which shall not be acceptable to all, they will go on from
+strength to strength, growing daily in power and resources, moved by one
+mind and by one purpose, till the time comes for the dealing of the last
+great blow which shall shatter finally and for ever Teutonic aspirations
+to rule the world.  If signs of weakness there be--and they are not
+wanting--they are not to be found in the ranks of Germany's enemies.
+Rather are they to be found in the camp of the enemy himself.  From all
+parts of the Teutonic Empires and their Allied nations come the signs
+which tell of war-weariness, of a growing conviction that further
+conquests are impossible, that the War has become a struggle for
+existence, that the enemy is knocking ever more and more loudly at the
+gate.
+
+The scales are beginning to fall from the eyes of the German people.
+They are yet far from convinced that all is lost, but at least they are
+beginning to be sure that nothing is to be gained.  No longer do we hear
+the boastful assertion that all their losses shall be made good by huge
+indemnities to be extracted from their crushed and beaten foes.  A new
+note is being sounded of the need for sacrifice; new warnings are ever
+being given that Germany's war will have to be paid for by Germany, and
+not by the rest of the world.  It is too early to say that German
+resolution is seriously weakened; it is not too soon to say that the
+German people are beginning to realise at last the strength of the
+combinations they have aroused against themselves.
+
+On the other hand, the temper of the Allies, their confidence in their
+cause, and their ability to make that cause good has never stood so
+high.  They have learned the lesson they needed eighteen months ago--
+that the War will be something far more serious and more terrible than
+they anticipated, that much remains to be done, that many sacrifices
+will have to be made before success crowns their efforts.  But in
+learning that lesson they have also learned their own strength.  They
+have learned, too, to trust one another, to see that the cause of one is
+the cause of all.  And in the thoroughness with which they learn that
+lesson lies the strongest pledge for a happy issue.  The Allies cannot
+be defeated so long as they remain true to themselves and to each other,
+so long as they remain bound together by the bonds of loyalty and
+constancy to a great and a sacred cause.  That they are so bound to-day
+none can dispute; that they will remain so bound to the end it would be
+treason to them and to ourselves to doubt.  Not to one but to each of
+the Allies in turn have the Germans gone with their insulting attempts
+to buy a separate peace, to achieve by sheer bribery what they have
+failed to achieve by force of arms in spite of all their "victories."
+By each of their opponents in turn they have been spurned with contempt.
+Russia simply tore up their clumsy tenders of treason without deigning
+even to reply.  And, as we have since learned, even gallant little
+Belgium, torn and ravished as few countries have ever been torn and
+ravished in the world's history, spurned an offer which would have given
+her back much of what she had lost, but would have lost for her the
+priceless possession for which she fought--her national honour.
+
+With these object-lessons before her eyes, perhaps in the days to come
+even Germany, who has shown herself so thoroughly oblivious to what
+honour and conscience mean, may realise that there are nations in the
+world to whom there are better and higher things than mere wealth and
+power, that there are principles which soar far above material
+considerations, that she is face to face with something which is at
+present far beyond her comprehension, and that something far mightier
+than the mightiest cannon ever forged in the furnaces of Krupps' is
+working for her downfall.  That something is the moral sense of the
+world at large, of which, as yet, the Germans have not the slightest
+understanding.  The German, even in the midst of his successes and
+triumphs, is faced by a resolution at least as great as his own, he is
+faced by men whose hearts are aflame with the sacred fire of liberty, he
+is faced by men to whom honour and good faith are all in all.  And in
+the face of that combination even the boasted might and efficiency of
+Germany will go down at last, in the fullness of time, in hopeless and
+irretrievable ruin.
+
+CHAPTER SIX.
+
+THE TERROR IN GERMANY.
+
+I am most emphatically not one of those who think we ought to take for
+granted all the stories we get, often from German sources, of the
+condition of things in Germany.
+
+We know enough of German methods to know that for her own purposes she
+is capable of flying kites of varying types and shades; and one of the
+kites which was very prominently flown in the early days, comparatively
+speaking, of the War was the fiction that for her own brutal and illegal
+purposes England was "starving German babies" through the medium of her
+infamous (in German eyes) blockade.
+
+It mattered nothing to the Germans that in 1871 the blockade of Paris
+and the starvation of the civilian people was one of the principal means
+by which she enforced the capitulation.  The Hun never likes his own
+medicine.  What was, when applied to France in 1871, a stroke of German
+genius, becomes, when applied by the British Fleet to Germany in 1915, a
+crime so infamous as to call down all the vengeance of heaven upon the
+brutal English.
+
+In German eyes no weapon of war is legitimate if it is applied against
+the sacred persons of Germans; on the other hand, any and every device
+of the devil becomes a righteous punishment if it is used against
+Germany's enemies.  Surely never was any people in the world so lacking
+in a sense of proportion and common sense!  There is no doubt, I think,
+that the first "starvation" cries which emanated from Germany were a
+cunningly devised plan to work upon the sympathies of neutrals and, in
+particular, upon the United States.  There are always in every country a
+certain number of good, sentimental souls whose hearts are apt to run
+away with their heads, who are apt to think or act very much as their
+emotions lead them, and are entirely incapable of looking at more than
+one side of any question.  It was to just these people and, of course,
+to the German people in America, that the first frantic "starvation"
+appeals were directed.  I firmly believe that at that time there was
+little or no serious shortage in Germany, and that the outcry that was
+raised was merely a ruse to catch the sentimentalists' attention.  It
+succeeded to a certain extent, and it gave the "hyphenated" section of
+the American people an opportunity of which they took full advantage for
+renewed girdings against England.  But neither then nor at any other
+time did it succeed in its real purpose, which was to procure by fair
+means or foul a relaxation of the British blockade.
+
+How serious that blockade was to become I do not believe the German
+people or the German rulers realised in the early days.  I do not
+believe they realised that it was possible so completely to cut off
+their supplies as to produce anything like grave inconvenience, to say
+nothing of actual want.  They have learned differently since!  There is
+a growing volume of testimony from competent observers that the
+effectiveness of the British blockade is at last beginning to tell its
+story in Germany.  The "bread cards," the "butter cards," the meatless
+days, the frantic appeals to the German people to give up the grease in
+which they love to bathe themselves at their meals, may be, as the
+Government pretends, merely a wise conservation of their resources.  But
+if that is all, this "conservation of energy" is being carried out on a
+scale which is rapidly disheartening and discouraging the German people
+in every part of the Empire.
+
+The following extract from a Copenhagen paper no doubt puts the case so
+high as to be practically a burlesque, but it at least shows that
+countries adjoining Germany, and in free communication with her,
+understand that the shortage of food and other supplies is far more
+serious than the Germans are prepared to admit.  A Reuter telegram from
+Copenhagen says:
+
+  The Labour journal, _Folkets Avis_, publishes a letter from a business
+  man who has just returned from a six months' round tour of Germany, in
+  which he describes the conditions there as more desperate than those
+  in Paris in 1870.  The writer is convinced that there is not now a
+  living cat or dog in the whole of Germany, all having been eaten.
+
+  Animal lovers trying to hide their pets have been betrayed by their
+  neighbours and punished.  Storks, swallows, starlings, and all kinds
+  of wild birds have been systematically killed, and the result, he
+  declares, will be felt in Scandinavian countries in the coming spring.
+  All sea fowl have long since been exterminated.
+
+I have not much doubt that this extract gives far too gloomy a picture
+if it is intended to represent the condition of the great mass of the
+German people; I do not believe, though I should like to, that
+starvation has gone so far as this.  But it is more than likely--indeed,
+I believe it is practically certain--that there is in it a considerable
+basis of truth.
+
+We have to remember that owing to the demoralisation of the German
+currency by the flood of paper money prices in Germany have gone up to
+an enormous extent, while at the same time, owing to the complete
+disappearance of her manufacturing and export business, wages have
+fallen in all but a few special trades.  For this reason a large
+percentage of the population is feeling the pinch of want quite apart
+from any actual shortage of food in the country, and there may well be a
+good deal in the story of the Danish merchant that most of the wild
+birds, if not the very dogs and cats, have fallen victims to the
+necessity for obtaining food.
+
+It will be convenient if we consider the shortage of necessaries in
+Germany under various heads, the first of which is naturally the
+deficiency in the food supply, since that is likely to exercise the
+profoundest influence on the great mass of the people.  On this point we
+have abundant evidence, not only from neutrals who have been able to
+move more or less freely about Germany, but, still more important, from
+English people who have returned after being liberated by exchange or
+otherwise.
+
+One and all are agreed that the German people are suffering from an
+actual shortage of food.  It is not merely a question of prices, though
+these are far higher than they are in England, and the wealthy folk are
+still able to get almost all they want.  There is, we are assured on
+evidence which it is practically impossible to ignore, a very serious
+shortage of many commodities of everyday use, the lack of which is
+severely felt, as, owing to the very high prices ruling, they are almost
+entirely beyond the reach of the people at large.
+
+Now, in considering the question of the food supplies of Germany, it is
+important to remember that in normal times Germany imports some forty
+per cent, of the fodder used for feeding her sheep and cattle, and it is
+the scarcity of fodder that has produced the present shortage of meat.
+That such a shortage exists we know from the ordinances made by the
+German Government providing for two, three, and even four meatless days
+per week for everyone in Germany.  In the early days of the War,
+confident that the struggle would be a short one, the Germans took no
+special pains to keep up their supply of cattle.  It was only after the
+battle of Flanders that they discovered their mistake, and that the
+question of the supply of meat was destined to be critical.
+
+Then came the panic legislation which led to the slaughtering of swine
+on an enormous scale.  It was decided to devote all the available fodder
+to the feeding of cattle, since these would be the most difficult to
+replace after the War.  Pigs were killed _en masse_, orders being given
+that the flesh was to be tinned to form a reserve.  But it was soon
+found that even this was not sufficient to save the situation.  Owing to
+the growing stringency of the blockade fodder for the cattle began to
+give out, and then it was decided to fatten pigs.  In consequence the
+slaughter of cattle has increased enormously, and hence arises the
+growing shortage of milk, butter, and cheese.
+
+Now whatever may be the leakages in the British blockade, it is quite
+certain that only the barest fraction of Germany's former imports is
+getting through; nothing can reach her directly oversea, and our trade
+agreements with neutral nations to prevent reshipment, even if they are
+not all that we could desire, are certainly having a very great effect.
+And it is certain that, despite smuggling on an unprecedented scale,
+Germany is very far from getting anything like all that she imperatively
+requires.  The pinch is there, and it is growing, and that it is growing
+rapidly is shown by the increasing violence of the German threats
+against England and her incessant announcements that she is really
+getting ready for some new "frightfulness" that shall put all her
+previous efforts completely into the shade.  We hear and note, but we
+are in no wise terrified.
+
+Frantic efforts are being made by the Germans to purchase and import
+cattle food of all descriptions, and in addition such fats as butter,
+lard, and margarine, the shortage of which has produced an enormous
+effect throughout the Empire.  It is our business to see that she fails;
+and with our Navy given a free hand, I am confident that we can do so.
+
+We know how serious the shortage of bread has become; we know that no
+German can purchase bread without a "bread card," and that the amount he
+can purchase is severely restricted.  We know that he is ordered not to
+eat meat on certain days of the week.  We know, too, that in various
+towns, even in Berlin itself, the maddened people have already broken
+out into "bread riots," and that their mutinous gatherings have been
+dispersed by the police.  Not even the well-drilled German will consent
+to go on indefinitely on an empty stomach.  There have been cavalry
+charges in some towns, there have been violent riots in many, people
+have pillaged shops; "in fact," says the German writer of a letter found
+on a prisoner, "we have a war at home as well as abroad."
+
+Another letter sent from Munich to "cheer up" a prisoner at Oleron says,
+"Wherever we go, and wherever we may be, we see nothing and hear nothing
+except misery and poverty."  A letter from Greiben contains similar
+lamentations, and adds, "With all our strength we have accomplished
+nothing, and we shall soon be ruined."
+
+Germany's chief imports at present, secured, of course, by devious ways
+since she is unable to import anything directly, are cotton, wool,
+copper, lead, paraffin, rubber, nickel, oils, wheat, rye, and barley.
+These are all of vital necessity to her continued existence, not merely
+to her successful conduct of the War.  With the food shortage growing
+day by day, she must import even larger and larger quantities, and
+unless she can do so the end is inevitable; a point must come at which
+German moral will simply go to pieces.  Our blockade is hastening that
+moment.  None the less, we have to remember that starvation alone will
+not bring Germany to subjection; she will always obtain and grow
+supplies to a certain extent, probably enough to stave off actual
+starvation on a scale which would induce her to sue for peace.  We have
+to complete the process of attrition, valuable as it is, by force of
+arms, and only a decisive military defeat will put an end to German aims
+and ambitions.  That is a cardinal fact of which we must never lose
+sight.
+
+There is hardly an article of food or drink for which the German
+chemists have not succeeded in finding more or less satisfactory
+substitutes.  Bread is one of the best known instances.  The German
+"kriegs-brod" or "war bread," though it is nothing like so palatable or
+so nourishing as ordinary bread, is yet sufficient to sustain life,
+though there is reason to think it sets up digestive disorders.
+Similarly, a glance at the German papers will show dozens of
+advertisements offering substitutes for endless other articles of diet.
+These substitutes are very interesting; whether they are satisfying is
+another question, and one which we can leave the beleaguered Germans to
+find out for themselves.  "Acorn coffee," "artificial fats," "artificial
+honeys," wooden instead of leather shoes, "German tea" (whatever that
+may be), "egg substitute," "wood meal," sausage substitutes with "more
+than the nutritive qualities of beef"--these are only a few picked at
+random.  No more convincing testimony to the value and effectiveness of
+the British blockade could be asked for.  These are not the
+announcements of the German Government, intended to deceive, but the
+advertisements of business men who have to pay good solid German cash--
+or it may be notes!--for them.  They speak more eloquently than any
+comment of ours could do.
+
+A good deal of surprise has been expressed that, in view of the
+undoubted shortage of many necessities in Germany, there has been no
+apparent falling-off in the equipment or supplies of the German Army.
+In reality this is not a matter that need disturb our judgment on the
+general question.  We have to remember that Germany is organised on a
+military basis, and that the militarist party, who most decidedly hold
+the upper hand, will see to it that as long as there is a pound of food
+in the country it will not be the Army that will go short.  In every
+department of German life everything is subordinated to the demands of
+the Army, and no one can question that this is the correct policy.  Any
+serious shortage or discontent in the Army would bring the military
+structure crashing to the ground, and there can be no doubt that the
+shortage which exists will have to go much farther before its effects
+are felt in the field.  It will come, beyond doubt, but it is more than
+likely that shortage of men will make itself felt first.
+
+The views of Abbe Wetterle on this point are worth quoting.  He was
+before the War Deputy for Alsace in the Reichstag.  When war broke out
+he escaped to France, and has lived there since.  He considers that the
+Central Empires are already beaten.
+
+  "Germany is at the end of her tether, that is the truth," he says.
+  "She can no longer obtain credit, and the value of the mark is falling
+  every day.  After having mobilised ten million valid and invalid
+  soldiers, Germany, whose losses number three and a half millions, and
+  whose auxiliary services behind her lines require 1,700,000 men, can
+  no longer fill the gaps in her Army, and her battle-line grows in
+  extent every day.  Famine stares her population in the face.  By
+  February or March at latest the lack of food will be severely felt.
+  Riots have already taken place in her large cities, and they will
+  gradually multiply and become more violent.  Lack of men, lack of
+  money, lack of food--such is the danger which threatens Germany."
+
+Now we know very well that the German newspapers are controlled by the
+Government to an extent which is unknown in any other country in the
+world; not even the British censorship has such drastic powers.  The
+columns of the German papers are therefore about the last place in which
+we should expect to find any inkling of the real situation as it exists
+in Germany to-day.  It is the Government order that everything shall be
+painted _couleur de rose_.  Yet even the German Press is becoming
+restive under the strain, and is beginning to say things which a very
+short time ago would have been impossible.  Here is a telling extract
+from the Socialist paper _Vorwarts_, one of the few of the German
+journals which has risked a good deal in its insistence upon letting out
+at least some of the truth.  It says:
+
+  In a few weeks the sowing and preparing of the fields for the new
+  harvest will have begun, and upon that harvest everything will depend.
+  The coming harvest is of immeasurable importance for the German
+  people.  Fantastic speculations as to great imports of foodstuffs from
+  the Orient have now become silent.  Germany depends during the
+  duration of the War upon her own production of food...  It is evident
+  now that our much-praised organisation of our economic system is in no
+  way so good as enthusiastic amateurs would like us to believe.
+
+This is not exactly the language of a conquering nation whose Chancellor
+declares that she has sufficient for all her needs, but I have no doubt
+that it represents the real situation and reflects the prevailing
+anxiety much more accurately than Dr Helfferich's boasting speeches,
+which are undoubtedly meant for foreign consumption.
+
+It is not merely in the matter of food supply that Germans are face to
+face with conditions which are giving her leading men cause "furiously
+to think."  It is true it is what makes the most immediate impression on
+the public at large.  But there are men in Germany who realise that
+there is a world to be faced when the War is over, and that as the days
+slip by Germany slips into a worse and worse position for meeting the
+conditions she will have to confront after the declaration of peace.  I
+will first deal very briefly with some of the social aspects of
+Germany's present condition.
+
+Germany's terrific losses in killed and maimed men, coupled with the
+terrible drop in the birth-rate, which has fallen far lower than it did
+in the Franco-Prussian War, are causing the gravest anxiety among the
+German economic thinkers.  Next to the fall in the birth-rate, the rate
+of mortality among newly-born children is causing alarm; and when we
+remember how admirable are the German arrangements for the preservation
+of infant life, we can realise that very grave causes must be at work to
+account for the existing state of things.  That those causes are
+connected in some degree with the efficacy of the blockade is probable,
+but a greater contributory cause has been the general distress caused by
+the War, and the failure of the municipal authorities to provide the
+necessary relief.
+
+The pensions payable to the widows of German soldiers who have died in
+action are very small; distress and misery have entered the families
+where there are many children, and many of those are succumbing to the
+prevailing lack of food.  To such a pitch has Germany been brought by
+the insane ambition of her rulers!
+
+Orphans in Germany now number 800,000, Many of these orphans must for
+years remain a tax upon the State; they will be _bouches inutiles_ until
+they reach the wage-earning age, and they will provide after the War,
+just as they are providing at present, a problem which will tax
+Germany's economic and administrative resources to the uttermost.
+
+Another problem with which the Germans will have to deal is the
+appalling increase in crime.  In spite of the fact that a great
+proportion of the men of the country are serving with the Army, the
+statistics of crime make appalling reading, and offences of all kinds
+are especially numerous among children.  The juvenile Hun behaves as a
+Hun to the manner born once he is removed from the stern parental
+control which in times of peace keeps him within what, for Germany, are
+reasonable bounds.  And even in times of peace the figures of juvenile
+crime in Germany are terrible.  In the year 1912 the following crimes
+were committed in Germany by boys between the ages of twelve and
+eighteen:
+
+  Criminal assaults, 952.
+  Murder and manslaughter, 107.
+  Bodily injuries, 8978.
+  Damages to property, 2938.
+
+These figures _for boys alone_ are far more than the entire total of
+such crimes ever committed in England.  For instance, the yearly average
+of crimes of malicious and felonious wounding in England for the ten
+years 1900-1910 was 1,262; in Germany for the ten years 1897-1907 it was
+172,153.  And the population of Germany may be taken at 65,000,000, with
+that of England at 45,000,000.  These statistics give us some idea of
+the real character of the nation which holds itself up as the apostle of
+"kultur" to the rest of the world, and shows us what blessings we might
+expect under Teutonic rule.
+
+It is naturally very difficult to get thoroughly reliable information as
+to the exact condition of things in Germany.  Most of the "neutrals"
+whose stories appear in the English Press appear to be rather too apt to
+say the things which they think will best please English readers.  None
+the less, their stories cannot all be invented, and we have valuable
+corroboration of many of them in the shape of reports published by
+neutral observers in the neutral Press--especially in countries where
+the prevailing sympathy tends to be pro-German--and from our own people
+who have returned from Germany.
+
+A particularly valuable example of the former comes from Copenhagen.
+Dr Halvdan Koht, one of the foremost Norwegian historians, is known for
+his distinctly pro-German leanings.  Yet, after a prolonged stay in
+Germany, he draws in the Christiania newspaper _Social Demokraien_ a
+decidedly dismal picture of German life and of the state of public
+feeling in Germany.  "The people are tired of the War" is his
+conclusion.  It is true the whole country considers that Germany is
+safe, but the whole country has arrived at the conclusion that its
+adversaries, especially Great Britain, cannot be crushed.  The fact that
+Great Britain is still in full possession of all her territories, that
+she cannot be attacked on land, and is less affected by the War than
+Germany is rapidly dawning on the whole people.  Moreover, it is being
+realised that, in spite of her immense military strength, Germany will
+never be able to enforce a definite decision in her favour.  Dr Koht
+interviewed a number of people of all classes on this subject, and all
+expressed similar views and heartfelt weariness of the War.
+
+On this subject I might also quote the view expressed by a lady who
+reached England recently, one of the first batch of the so-called
+"reprisal women" who, the Berlin authorities have decided, are eating
+too much meat and butter, and must therefore be sent home.  "Germans are
+suffering agonies," this lady said, "especially the poor people.  They
+know, in spite of the lying Press, that their sufferings are merely
+beginning, and they are preparing themselves for more suffering until
+their rulers are forced to realise that the limits of endurance have
+been reached, and then sue for peace."  The Germans, she added, "are
+ready to bear the financial losses and the appalling losses in men, but
+life on rations is simply driving them insane.  The bread cards at first
+amused them like children, as one more opportunity of obeying orders, of
+which they are so fond.  Now they have butter cards, fat cards, and, in
+some places, petroleum cards."
+
+I do not think we can disregard all the evidence that is rapidly
+accumulating as to the widespread distress in Germany to-day.  And I do
+not think that that distress is likely to decrease.  We have it on the
+authority of Mr Asquith that the tightening of the blockade is
+proceeding, and the tighter we pull the strangling knot which the
+British Navy has drawn round the German neck, the sooner we shall return
+to the days of peace.
+
+But, in the words of Lord Headley, "When Germany wobbles we must hit as
+hard as possible in the right place and in the right way.  But let us
+make sure of our own set purpose and fixed resolve, that now that we
+have made up our minds, there shall be no indications of wobbling on our
+part."  That, I think, expresses the judgment of the nation as a whole.
+We do not want to sit down in the hope that the "war of attrition" will
+do our business for us.  It is "the long push, the strong push, and the
+push all together" of Britain and her Allies which alone will bring us
+to a triumphant success.  The "war of attrition" is helping to bring
+nearer the day when the great push will be possible, but of itself alone
+it will never compel victory over an enemy who--it would be foolish to
+think otherwise--will fight to the last gasp.
+
+CHAPTER SEVEN.
+
+GERMANY'S BANKRUPT FUTURE.
+
+I have no hesitation in saying that from our point of view one of the
+most encouraging features of the whole situation is the extraordinary
+collapse of German credit--extraordinary, I mean, in comparison with her
+apparent successes in the campaign on land.  The heavy decline in the
+value of German and Austrian money in neutral countries is an absolutely
+unmistakable sign that the finances of our enemies are, after eighteen
+months of War, reaching a condition which before long must prove a
+source of the gravest embarrassment to the Central Powers.
+
+As I write, the exchange value of the sovereign in the United States is
+about two per cent, below normal, and the same condition exists in
+Holland and Scandinavia.  Considering how much we have been buying
+abroad, such a trifling depreciation in our credit is a wonderful
+testimony to the stability of British institutions.  But if we turn to
+German and Austrian currency we find that it has declined in value from
+twenty to thirty per cent.  In other words, neutral countries are
+beginning to show themselves unwilling to take German money; and as
+Germany can now buy only from neutral countries, it is quite obvious
+that she not only has a difficulty in paying for her purchases, but that
+she has also to pay an exceedingly inflated price for them.
+
+My readers will remember the sensation that was caused when, owing to
+our heavy purchases of food and war material from America, the value of
+the sovereign dropped something like six per cent.  That meant that for
+every hundred pounds we paid to America for goods bought we were losing
+six pounds owing to the fall in the exchange; and when it is recalled
+that our purchases were on a scale which involved hundreds of millions,
+it will be seen that the decline was a very serious matter for us.  But
+so good was our credit that there was no difficulty in floating a huge
+loan in America, and the result was that the value of the sovereign at
+once appreciated, and it has never seriously dropped since; in fact, it
+has steadily risen.  The process was helped by selling American
+securities, of which we hold huge sums.  We can repeat both processes as
+often as we like in reason, because our credit is good, and our holdings
+of American securities are still enormous.  Germany can do neither--
+firstly, because her credit is utterly impoverished, and, secondly,
+because, whatever she may sell, she and those with whom she would like
+to deal have no security that the goods would have more than a very
+slender chance of getting through the British blockade.  Here, again, we
+see how our overwhelming sea power is helping the cause of the Allies.
+In spite of the huge sums we are spending, Germany is infinitely worse
+off than we are, and there is every reason to believe that the
+tremendous fall which her money is now experiencing means that her
+credit abroad is rapidly nearing the exhaustion point.
+
+The fall in the value of German money tends to show that our blockade is
+operating with increasing stringency and success.  It seems probable
+enough that Germany can still manage to obtain through the neutral
+countries many of the things of which she has most pressing need.  But
+apparently her export trade has been much more severely hit.  She
+depends for this trade upon the import of raw materials, most of which
+are extremely bulky and quite unlikely to escape the unremitting
+vigilance of the British Navy.  Consequently Germany finds herself
+unable to pay for her imports by the ordinary channels of international
+trade, and the difficulty of paying at all has become serious.  Nearly
+all modern business is done on a paper basis; that is to say, on
+promises to pay--in other words, on credit--and credit obviously depends
+upon the financial stability of the concern or the nation which seeks
+thus to obtain goods.  That is why the continued decline in the value of
+the paper mark shows the declining confidence of the neutral nations in
+Germany's power to redeem her pledges when the time for payment comes.
+Germany's ultimate solvency depends upon her ultimate victory, and we
+can see by the reluctance of the neutral nations to give credit to
+Germany that they are very far from satisfied with Germany's prospect of
+coming out "on top."  And when neutral financiers come to the conclusion
+that the War will end in Germany's absolute bankruptcy--that is, in her
+inability to pay more than a few shillings in the pound of her debts--
+the value of her paper promises will sink almost to vanishing point, and
+there will be such a financial crash as this world has never seen.  The
+faith of the neutral in German stability is wavering already, while the
+Allies still hold the confidence of the world.  That is a factor of
+supreme importance.  The day will come when not a single neutral will
+trade with Germany except on a gold basis, and when that day dawns the
+utter collapse of the Central Powers will assuredly be close at hand.
+
+We have just seen a very striking evidence of Germany's impoverishment
+in regard to the supply of wheat which Germany desired to purchase from
+Rumania.  If there is one commodity which Germany needs more than any
+other to-day it is wheat.  Rumania demanded that the wheat should be
+paid for in gold in Bucharest.  The German and Austrian Governments
+offered anything and everything else except gold.  They offered first
+ammunition, then paper, then Rumanian Treasury bonds, ammunition, and
+paper.  The Rumanians, however, insisted upon gold, and the deal fell
+through for the simple reason that Germany had no gold to spare.  Few
+instances have been more eloquent of the state to which Germany is
+reduced.  And what Rumania says to-day the rest of the neutrals are
+likely enough to say to-morrow--"Either gold or no goods."  We can be
+quite sure that if Germany meets with a single great defeat in the
+operations which are assuredly near at hand, there will be a revulsion
+of feeling in the neutral countries which will render the demand for
+gold insistent.  And if Germany cannot find gold to pay for the wheat
+she so sorely needs from Rumania, what are her prospects of finding it
+for other countries?
+
+Now the German method of financing the War has constituted one of the
+most extraordinary gambles known in the history of finance.  She has
+piled up an enormous debt in paper.  The _Economist_ estimates the total
+of Germany's war credits up to the end of December last at 1,500 million
+pounds sterling, and the average monthly war expenditure at 92.350
+million pounds.  Towards this Germany had raised up to September 15,
+1915, 1,280 million pounds.  In Germany these loans have been cited as a
+proof that financially the country is impregnable.  But this assertion
+does not convince.  The loans have been obtained only by wholesale
+inflation through borrowing on Treasury bills from the Reichsbank.  The
+amount of these bills outstanding is carefully concealed from the world,
+but it is certainly enormous, and it seems to be rising rapidly again,
+though Germany's third loan was floated quite recently.  The amount of
+these bills on January 15 was estimated at 250 million pounds.  It is
+easier to trace the amount of the inflation of the currency by paper,
+and by paper without any gold backing.  Between July, 1914, and January
+15, 1916, the amount of Reichsbank notes in circulation increased from
+95 million pounds to 319 million pounds and the amount of Treasury notes
+from 7 million pounds to 16 million pounds, while another 54 million
+pounds in paper was added in the form of Loan Office notes.  That is to
+say, since the outbreak of war the amount of paper currency has
+increased from 101 million pounds to 389 million pounds, or about 285
+per cent.  How much the financial position has been worsened by the
+extension of banking credits we do not know, as the bi-monthly
+statements of the great banks have, most significantly, been
+discontinued.  It is true that during the same period the amount of gold
+in the Reichsbank has been increased by 55 million pounds.  But a large
+part of this increase, it is believed, came from the reserve of the
+Austro-Hungarian Bank, and in any case it is not nearly sufficient to
+have the smallest effect in counteracting the flood of paper.  The
+effects of the inflation of the currency and its debasement by the huge
+issues of paper money are seen in the rapid collapse of the mark and the
+equally rapid rise in prices which in Germany to-day is making the lives
+of the poorer people well-nigh unbearable.  And it is most noteworthy
+that in those countries where Germany has been able to trade with the
+greatest freedom the collapse of German credit is most unmistakable.
+That is for Germany, as well as for ourselves, a grave and unmistakable
+fact; it is verily the writing on the wall.  Germany has been weighed
+and found wanting in the balance of the neutral nations who are more
+friendly disposed towards her.
+
+To meet the expense of the War Germany has issued paper to her own
+population on a scale of which the world has had no experience.  In
+return for the paper promises of the Government they have poured out
+with a lavish hand everything of which the Government stood in need, and
+it is impossible not to marvel at what is either patriotism or a very
+high order of gullibility carried to the extremest limits.  In either
+case Germany's people have lent to her vast sums for a mere paper
+security, quite apart from the amounts she has expended in other
+countries and which she will have to pay for in gold or exports, which
+come to the same thing.  What, we may well ask, will be the position
+when, after the War, German merchants want money--not paper--to resume
+their trading with the rest of the world, to purchase the raw material
+upon which the very life of her commerce depends?  How is the Government
+to raise the gigantic sums that will be required not merely to pay
+interest on this stupendous pile of debt, but to begin to form a sinking
+fund to pay it off?
+
+My own view--and it is shared by many others--is that Germany's
+borrowings on such a stupendous scale were made possible only because
+the German people, convinced that they were really and truly the
+supermen they fancied themselves to be, were firmly persuaded that they
+were going to win the War "hands down."  They were assured _ad nauseam_
+that speedy victory was certain, that France was to be instantly crushed
+and Russia crippled, that Britain could not intervene in anything like
+decisive fashion in time to save her Allies, and that the end of the War
+would come in a few months at most, with a triumphant Germany extorting
+untold millions in the shape of indemnities from her trampled and
+bleeding enemies.  The War was to be, in fact, a highly profitable trade
+undertaking, in which Germany's losses in killed and maimed were to be
+more than compensated for by increased wealth drawn from the coffers of
+her enemies, and especially England, the worst enemy of all.
+
+But the War has not quite "panned out" to schedule, and Germany is
+to-day rapidly realising the fact.  "In my opinion," said Lord Inchcape,
+speaking at the annual meeting of the National Provincial Bank of
+England, "Germany is already irretrievably beaten, and no one knows this
+better than she does herself."  That is a very strong expression of
+opinion from a man who is in a position to know what he speaks of when
+he deals with matters of finance.  As I have said before, I do not
+believe that money alone can win the War, but there can be no reasonable
+doubt that the growing financial difficulties of Germany are swiftly
+bringing her to a position in which she will find it impossible to
+oppose with any hope of success the steadily growing power of the
+Allies.  So much at least money can do and is doing, though the final
+blow must be dealt in decisive military action.  Otherwise Germany will
+never be convinced that she is really and truly beaten, her people will
+be told again that they are unconquerable, and she will begin with all
+her wonderful organising powers to prepare for a renewed campaign of
+aggression in the future.
+
+I cannot see how Germany is to be preserved from national bankruptcy; I
+cannot conceive any means by which she can hope to pay off the enormous
+debt she has piled up.  Her export trade is utterly smashed, and it must
+take years to get it back even if the Allies are foolish enough after
+the War to allow her the commercial privileges she has enjoyed in the
+past, which is most unlikely.  Her losses in men and material have been
+stupendous, she is eating herself up, she is blazing away her piled-up
+wealth at a time when she cannot keep going even a fraction of her
+commerce to make up for the steady drain upon her.  We at least are free
+to trade overseas to as great an extent as we can manufacture, and it is
+a very gratifying fact that the trade of the United Kingdom has in the
+past few months shown a steady increase; February showed an advance of
+10 million pounds on the corresponding month of 1915.  We are not losing
+our markets to the extent that Germany is, for the simple reason, again,
+that our Fleet can keep open our trade routes.  And we have also to pay
+regard to the fact that the German is not going to be a popular
+individual for a good many years to come in any civilised country.  At
+the best he is going to have a good deal of trouble to persuade any of
+the Allies to do business with him on any terms whatever; at the worst
+it is more than likely that he will find himself shut out completely by
+an overwhelming tariff from every British, French, Russian, Italian, and
+Japanese market.  How, under such conditions, Germany will ever succeed
+in paying her debts I cannot understand.
+
+Borrowing in such a War as this is unavoidable for any of the
+belligerents; it is impossible to defray the stupendous cost out of
+income.  The whole problem to be solved is whether it is possible to
+secure by taxation the interest on the increased debts and also a margin
+of revenue which during the War will help to pay for it, and after the
+War will provide a sinking fund to gradually pay off the sums borrowed.
+Germany's paper system is all wrong, because, in the first place, she
+has not the gold to back it up, and, in the second place, because no
+provision has been made by taxation to raise sums sufficient to provide
+interest and sinking fund.  Even before the War Germany's yearly budgets
+have been showing a series of deficits, and with the stupendous amount
+she has added to her debts it is difficult to see how after the War is
+over she will be able to avoid defaulting.  She will certainly not
+succeed in securing any indemnity as she did from France in 1871; she
+will far more probably find herself condemned to pay at least sufficient
+money to provide for the rehabilitation, so far as is possible, of
+Belgium.
+
+There is, it is true, one aspect of the case which is to some extent
+favourable to Germany.  A great portion of her war debt--in fact,
+practically the whole of it--is held at home, and it is quite possible
+that at the end of the War the people who have entrusted her with their
+savings will find themselves told that they will have to wait
+indefinitely for their money.  Repudiation on this scale would perhaps
+enable Germany to keep herself right with the rest of the world and
+avoid actual default in the international sense.  But the effect on her
+own people would be appalling!  Now it is a very remarkable fact that
+though the German Government has carefully kept from the mass of the
+people any real knowledge of the facts of the situation as we know it
+exists, it has during the past few months been allowing certain
+newspapers to warn the public in guarded terms of what is coming.  The
+_Berliner Post_ states openly that the situation is "terrifying."  That
+is a good deal of an admission for a people who a few months ago were
+setting out, as they themselves said, on a conquest of the world, and
+were going to extort the cost from their beaten enemies.  Warning the
+German people that they must be prepared for very bad times, the _Post_
+goes on to say:
+
+  Even the highest war indemnity that is thinkable cannot preserve us
+  from a stupendous addition to the Imperial Budget for 1916-17.
+  Without war damages we shall have to reckon upon an increase in the
+  yearly taxation of at least four milliards of marks.  From a technical
+  point of view alone such amount cannot be procured immediately by
+  taxation.  From the political point of view it would be a great
+  mistake if the population was not gradually acquainted with the
+  situation, which, looked upon as a whole, has something terrifying
+  about it.
+
+  Only by slowly being made accustomed to it can the situation become
+  softened for the people.  Probably the State Secretary for Finance,
+  when he introduces his proposals for the new taxation, will give as
+  near as possible a review of what the annual deficit will be.  German
+  people will only then be able to understand what wounds the War has
+  made and what great measures will be necessary for years to come to
+  heal them.  At present the greatest part of the people probably has no
+  idea of the situation.
+
+It is perhaps permissible to ask, in view of this outburst, what the
+German people, deluded and hoodwinked for so long, are likely to say
+when the full facts break upon their minds.  It will be noted that the
+_Berliner Post_ deals with the financial situation apart from the war
+expenses, and finds very little comfort in it.  The German people will
+find still less to be exultant about when the whole truth appears, as
+sooner or later it must, for it cannot be hidden much longer.  Up to the
+present Germany has imposed practically no new taxes; they will be on a
+crushing scale when the German people have to set themselves to pay the
+damages involved in the conflagration which they so wantonly provoked.
+
+But, doubters will ask, are we in any better case?  I will quote in
+answer Sir George Paish, one of our leading financial authorities.  "We
+may confidently expect," he recently declared, "that the nation after
+the War will have as much capital for investment as before the War."
+
+In twelve months of war Great Britain has been able to buy and to pay
+for nearly 900 million pounds of Colonial and foreign produce and goods
+for home consumption and for war purposes.  In addition she has found
+something like 350 million pounds of money for her Allies, Colonies, and
+customers.  She has met her own war expenses, amounting to 1,000 million
+pounds, exclusive of the 350 million pounds supplied to her Allies and
+Colonies for war purposes.  This great amount of money has been found
+with surprising ease.  But it is during the current year that we shall
+feel the severest strain.  We have to maintain upon the seas a Fleet
+even more powerful than that of last year, to provide our Allies,
+Colonies, and friends with at least 400 million pounds in loans, and to
+support in the field forces numbering nearly four million men, which
+will cost anything up to 2,000 million pounds.  And in spite of these
+gigantic liabilities we find to-day that British credit stands
+practically unimpaired, while that of Germany is rapidly falling, and
+may soon vanish altogether.  If the War has done nothing else, it has
+given the world such an example of financial stability as has never been
+seen.
+
+It is the deliberate opinion of Sir George Paish that our position after
+the War will be just about where we stood at the beginning.  We shall
+have sold a great many of our foreign securities, but, on the other
+hand, we shall have bought others from our Allies, customers, and
+Colonies, and, on balance, neither our home nor our foreign wealth will
+have been appreciably reduced.  What we shall have lost will be our new
+savings.  This loss amounts already to about 600 million pounds; if the
+War lasts another year it will have reached 1,000 million pounds in
+comparison with what our wealth would have been but for the War.
+
+Of course, we shall have created a great debt.  Already our debt,
+including the pre-war debt, is about 2,200 million pounds, and the debt
+charge and current Government expenses are about 300 million pounds.
+But it must be remembered that some 100 million pounds of this is
+interest which accrues to British investors, and that a large part of
+this interest will still be available for new capital purposes.  Our
+losses in men will be grievous.  But it must be recalled that one lesson
+of the War is that the whole nation is learning to work harder and more
+efficiently and that, in consequence, it is very doubtful whether our
+productive capacity has been seriously, if at all, reduced.  When our
+men return from the War we shall have an enormous supply of labour
+available, and for the full employment of that labour we shall be able
+to find the capital.  Will Germany be in anything like so favourable a
+position?
+
+The bold and courageous policy of Mr McKenna in grappling adequately
+with the problem of finance has secured the emphatic approval of the
+entire nation.  New burdens have been cheerfully shouldered; the country
+has shown unmistakably that it is prepared to make any sacrifices to win
+the War, and we have seen the income-tax doubled with far less protest
+than would have been aroused by the addition of a penny a few years ago.
+The nation has set itself to meet the cost of the War in the only
+possible way, by reducing all unnecessary expenditure, public and
+private, and devoting itself to the maintenance of our essential
+services, anxious only that so long as efficiency is secured money shall
+not be spared.  We have boldly faced the enormous additional taxation
+rendered necessary by the gigantic war expenditure, and therein we have
+a tremendous advantage over Germany, who is only now beginning to
+consider the new taxes that will be required, and does not seem
+particularly gratified by the prospect with which she finds herself
+faced.  Ominous mutterings of the coming storm are already to be heard,
+and when that storm breaks not even the iron discipline with which the
+Prussians have dragooned the entire German people will suffice to
+protect them from the wrath of those whom they have so grossly deceived.
+I do not know whether the German Government will dare to attempt to
+impose anything like the taxation which would be necessary to make
+provision for the war debt, but I am at least certain that as matters
+stand in Germany to-day the people have neither the will nor the ability
+to find the money.  They have been fed with lying assurances that the
+money is to be found by someone else, and their rage and disappointment
+when they find out how they have been deceived will, beyond doubt, lead
+to consequences little foreseen by the light-hearted blunderers who set
+half the world in flames eighteen months ago.
+
+I do not think that either now or in the future we need fear any
+comparison between the financial position of Britain and of her enemy.
+We are, and always have been, a far wealthier nation than the Germans;
+our credit is good, while Germany's is tottering to complete collapse;
+our resources in capital are as yet not seriously touched; our trade,
+even though its volume be diminished by the withdrawal of men for the
+Army and for munition making, still goes on as far as we can carry it.
+The real financial strength of the British Empire has as yet not been
+fully marshalled for the fray, and should the day ever come when money
+must be found beyond the resources of ordinary taxation there are vast
+reservoirs of strength which will yield supplies in abundance.  For we
+are in this War to win--let there be no mistake about that--and to gain
+a complete and lasting victory there is no sacrifice that our people,
+properly instructed, will refuse to make.  "To the last man and the last
+shilling" if necessary must be our motto.  Our people ask only for a
+definite and a strong lead; if they get that, we need have no fear of
+the outcome of the greatest struggle we have ever been called upon to
+wage.
+
+CHAPTER EIGHT.
+
+THE INVISIBLE HAND.
+
+I may fairly claim to have taken perhaps a leading part in bringing home
+to the people of this country a realisation of the perils to which our
+foolish good nature has exposed us in the matter of the spy danger.
+
+Though I am quite willing to admit that much has been done by our
+excelled Intelligence Department in putting a check upon the activities
+of the German spies since the War began, I cannot but confess that I
+look upon the continued presence in this country of some 22,000 German
+and Austrian enemies, allowed for the most part to go freely about their
+business, whatever it may be, with unmixed alarm.
+
+I raised my voice against the presence of spies among us before the War,
+and since.  Indeed, since the outbreak of hostilities I have addressed
+over a hundred audiences upon this very vital aspect of the War.
+
+Before the crisis--as long ago as 1906--I wrote and spoke of German
+spies; but for my pains I was jeered at by the public, laughed at by
+officialdom, and boycotted by a section of what is to-day known as the
+"Hush-a-bye Press."  Many times I sat with Lord Roberts, both of us in a
+state of despondency.  He had tried to do his best to awaken Britain and
+point out the pitfall ahead, and I had, in my own modest way,
+endeavoured to assist him.  But it was all to no purpose; and when I
+wrote the forecast, _The Invasion_, to which Lord Roberts wrote a
+striking preface, people busy with their money-making and under the
+hypnotism of the Hun, declared that the great Field Marshal was "old,"
+and that I was a mere "alarmist."
+
+In this War, united as we are to-day in the common cause, we have buried
+the past.  The future alone--the way to win the War--concerns us.
+
+We know quite well, and the facts have been admitted since the War
+began, that in times of peace not only our own country, but practically
+every country in the world, was overrun with a horde of Germans who,
+though ostensibly in business on their own account, were, in fact,
+secret agents for that department known as "Number 70, Berlin."  No
+nation has ever carried espionage to such lengths as it has been carried
+by the Germans, perhaps because there is no nation capable of so
+shamelessly abusing the hospitality of others and so flagrantly
+returning evil for good.  I have no doubt whatever that the laxity shown
+not only by ourselves, but by other nations to Germans in times of
+peace, has been a matter for unmixed amusement in the secret councils of
+the Kaiser at Potsdam.  To live in apparent peace and friendship for the
+express purpose of betraying is a Judas-like achievement in which no
+nation but the barbaric Teuton could take a pride, and there is ample
+evidence that before the War this was one of the favourite methods by
+which the German abroad served the interests of the Fatherland.  This I
+have pointed out for years.
+
+It cannot, alas, be pretended that, even since the War began, we have
+taken anything like adequate steps to protect ourselves against this
+grave national peril.  Upon the outbreak of the War Germany took steps
+at once to intern or expel every enemy alien, and thus to put them out
+of the way of doing any injury.  We cannot and do not complain of this;
+the complaints that have been made against the German proceedings were
+on the ground that the people interned were treated more like beasts
+than human beings.  The mere fact of expulsion or internment was a
+matter of ordinary prudence, and the Germans were unquestionably right
+in taking no chances in the matter of espionage.  Their action was only
+another instance of the thoroughness with which they had prepared for
+war, for there is no doubt that the steps taken were resolved upon long
+before war broke out; they could not otherwise have been taken with such
+promptness and on so great a scale.
+
+Have we been as prudent?  What was our action?  Of the facts with regard
+to German spies in England the Government had been fully warned long
+before the War, and there was and is no excuse for any shilly-shallying
+with the subject.  Yet for a long period hardly any action was taken to
+prevent the continued existence of a great danger, and it was only when
+the population became dangerously excited after the sinking of the
+"Lusitania" that internment was taken in hand with anything like vigour.
+And even this promise of Mr McKenna's has not been maintained, for we
+are now informed officially that there are still some 22,000 Germans and
+Austrians uninterned!  Can it be said that these people do not
+constitute a very grave and a very real danger?
+
+I am quite willing to admit that a proportion of them are perfectly
+respectable, honest folk who have no sympathy, it may be, with the cause
+of Germany, and who would not do anything to harm the country of their
+adoption.  There are undoubtedly even Germans who are not devoid of all
+decent feeling.  But there can be little question that a great many of
+them are of quite another way of thinking, and would be only too willing
+to commit outrage, wreck trains, blow up factories, destroy munition
+works, and stab us in the back if the opportunity offered itself.
+
+Some months after the War broke out Mr McKenna, who was then Home
+Secretary, published a long report in which he dealt with the steps that
+had been taken to break up the German spy system in England.  Possibly
+the then existing spy organisation was very badly crippled--perhaps for
+a time it was even destroyed.  But the Germans are a pertinacious
+people; they have since had time to reorganise and perfect their plans,
+and I have no doubt they have done so.  That we have interfered with
+them is unquestionable, and thanks to the increasingly stringent
+passport system--adopted shortly after it was advocated in my book
+_German Spies in England_--the German agents no doubt find it
+increasingly difficult to come and go undetected.  It has, however, to
+be recognised that no passport system can keep these gentry out
+altogether; we know that even in France the German agents, whether
+actually Germans by birth or not, are very active.  We know, too, that
+they are active here; we have caught and shot no fewer than ten of them
+up to the time of writing.  But will it be pretended that we have caught
+them all?  It is much more likely that many of them are still at large
+among us, and still active, though their opportunities for mischief have
+been very drastically restricted by the admittedly splendid work of our
+Naval and Military Intelligence Departments.
+
+Now I think it will be admitted that the purpose of internment is not
+punitive, but preventive.  We do not want to visit the misdeeds of
+Germany upon those Germans who are helpless in our midst; we do not want
+to inflict any unnecessary hardships on those who are not in a position
+to defend themselves, and who, whatever their nationality, cannot be
+held responsible for the bestiality which has made the name "German"
+accursed for ever among civilised nations.  But we do want, and I
+maintain that we are entitled, to protect ourselves against those who,
+living here unmolested, are eager to return only evil for good.  If in
+the course of protecting ourselves we inflict some hardships on those
+who do not deserve them, we can feel regret, but we cannot blame
+ourselves.  The fault lies not with us, but with those who plotted and
+arranged for war on an unexampled scale, and whose proceedings before
+and after war broke out were of a kind which put them completely out of
+court if they plead for any kind of consideration.
+
+Without hesitation I say that it would be practically impossible for a
+German spy to do any effective work here if he were not aided and
+abetted by Germans resident in England.  To be of any real value a spy
+must have been trained as such, and he must have a base from which to
+work; he must have a shelter in which he will be practically free from
+suspicion; he must have messengers and go-betweens who can move about
+freely without attracting undue attention.  And it is quite certain that
+no German spy coming to England can obtain all these things except with
+the active help of Germans already domiciled here--naturalised Germans
+who are enjoying absolute freedom.
+
+More than one German prisoner has escaped from our internment camps
+under circumstances which suggest very strongly that he has received
+help from people outside.  That those people were British I refuse to
+believe.  The inference is that they were Germans, and the conclusion is
+that all such people ought either to be interned or bundled, bag and
+baggage, out of the country.  There is no safety in any middle course.
+It is for these reasons that I do urge very strongly that the Government
+shall at once take steps to see that all enemy aliens shall either be
+expelled or interned.  I am convinced that our apathy in this direction,
+though it springs from feelings which are in every way creditable to our
+hearts, if not to our brains, is exposing us to dangers which, in these
+critical days, we should not be called upon to face.
+
+The activity of German spies in England at the present moment needs no
+demonstrating.  The Government has admitted it by the drastic steps they
+have taken to deal with the peril.  But every nation spies during
+war-time, whatever they may do in peace, and I am certainly not going to
+blame the Government because German agents are able to come over here
+and send home information which may be of value to their country.
+Probably it would not be possible for the Government to stop them
+coming, and our Intelligence Department is entitled to congratulations
+upon the excellent work that has been done in detecting them.  When the
+full story of their activities is told--if it ever is--it will be found
+how we have very often met and beaten the Hun at a game which he has
+been apt to consider as peculiarly his own.  At the same time I do not
+think we have done all that we could and should have done, and the
+readiest way of helping on the good work would be to remorselessly
+intern or expel all enemy aliens, no matter what their status may be.
+
+I am convinced that we should thus deal a formidable blow at the
+activities of the spies who visit our shores from time to time.  They
+would be deprived at a stroke of their best protectors, and they would
+be exposed to a very greatly increased risk of detection.  I admit that
+it would be very regrettable if some thousands of innocent Germans and
+Austrians, who, it may be, have a genuine admiration for England, and
+many of whom have sons serving in our Army, were thus inconvenienced.
+But the plain fact is that we cannot afford to take a single unnecessary
+risk, and whatever may be the inconvenience to the individual the safety
+of the State must be the first consideration.
+
+It has been shown over and over again, both here and in other countries,
+that naturalisation is one of the favourite devices of the spy.  It
+protects him by rendering him less likely to suspicion, and enables him
+to move about freely in places where the non-naturalised alien would
+have no chance of going.  It has been proved during the present War that
+German troops have been led by men who had actually lived for many years
+in the district, and had come to be looked upon almost as natives.
+Naturally they made exceedingly efficient guides.  Yet under cover of
+naturalisation they had been able for years to carry on active espionage
+work.
+
+Then we also have the Invisible Hand.  From August, 1914, to the present
+day a mysterious, silent, intelligent, Anglo-phobic mailed fist has been
+steadily at work for our discomfiture.  Evidence of the existence of the
+Invisible Hand lies broadcast.  As far as I know, however, only one
+person has publicly referred to it--the brilliant and well-informed
+writer who chooses to be known as "Vanoc," of the _Referee_.
+
+He has pointed out that no effort has been made to locate, to destroy,
+or to intern the owner of the Invisible Hand.  Yet we have seen its
+deadly finger-prints in many departments and in many parts of England,
+Scotland, and Wales.  We recognise them and their identity with those of
+our enemies.
+
+"Vanoc" wrote on February 20, 1916, the following words, which should be
+carefully weighed in all their full meaning:
+
+  Ships with steam up waiting for weeks at a time in the Channel, for
+  want of organisation, have cost the taxpayer thousands of pounds for
+  demurrage.  The artificial rise in freight is itself an effective
+  blockade of England.  That blockade is the work of the Invisible Hand.
+
+  Civilian doctors are overworked, while many doctors in Government
+  service are hard put to it to find work until midday.  Of all the
+  events that have happened since the beginning of the War, the refusal
+  of the late Ministry to hold a court-martial on the loss of the
+  "Formidable" is probably the most dramatic and the most effective
+  demonstration of the power of the Invisible Hand.  I am not free to
+  tell the true story.  When it is told it will be found that the
+  Invisible Hand was hard at work during the Irish troubles and in the
+  Curragh Camp affair before the outbreak of war.
+
+  Captain Loxley and his faithful dog friend were drowned from the
+  bridge of a ship handed over to the enemy by the Invisible Hand.  The
+  loss of Sir Christopher Craddock's squadron was the work of the
+  Invisible Hand.  Influencing honest Britons to organise the
+  destruction of one of their cruiser squadrons, the deed was easily
+  done.  Lord Fisher of Kilverstone has never consciously been under the
+  control of the Invisible Hand, but in his work at the Hague Conference
+  he and Sir Charles Otley, both most honourable and noble-minded
+  English gentlemen, were the unconscious instruments of the Invisible
+  Hand.
+
+  The bogey of the neutral Powers is a fiction concocted in the damp,
+  sinister palm of the Invisible Hand.  At the meeting at Cannon Street
+  Hotel on February 14, 1916, Lord Devonport made it clear to London men
+  of business that an occult force is at work able to use the resources
+  of the British Empire to feed, arm, succour, and strengthen Germany.
+
+The writer went on to point out that of all the triumphs of the
+Invisible Hand there was none greater than its successful manipulation
+of events which led to the escape of the "Goeben" and the "Breslau"; to
+the war with Turkey; to the death or disablement of 206,000 men of our
+race in the Gallipoli Peninsula; and in conclusion he wrote:
+
+  The finger-prints of the Invisible Hand show that it has a sense of
+  humour.  We have not only been steadily checked or defeated on land
+  for eighteen months, but we have been contemptuously checked or
+  defeated.  When the last troops left Gallipoli an aeroplane hovered
+  over the farewell scene.  A paper was dropped on which was inscribed,
+  "We don't want to lose you, but we think you ought to go."  Between
+  the Scylla of silly optimism and the Charybdis of ignorant pessimism
+  there is a narrow strait.  To steer our course we must take the
+  Invisible Hand off the helm.  We can win this War, but no longer can
+  we win it easily.  That feat is possible only if the Fleet is
+  unshackled and the methods that are so successful at sea are applied
+  to the administration of the land.  The appointment of Mr Joseph
+  Pease--a Quaker and a president of the Peace Society--to the Ministry
+  at the present time is a piece of work upon which the Invisible Hand
+  is to be warmly congratulated.
+
+If we are to win the War, the identity of this Invisible Hand must be
+exposed and its sinister influence defeated.  We have seen it at work in
+a hundred devious ways--the protection of the enemy alien, the amazing
+leniency shown towards spies, the splendid efforts of one department
+strangled by the red tape of another, the protection of German-owned
+property and funds, the provision of delights at Donington Hall and
+other Hun hostels; indeed, the whole of the "Don't-hurt-the-poor-German"
+policy which has been the amazement of ourselves and neutrals alike.
+
+It was this Invisible Hand which destroyed the splendid Dominion
+Parliament House at Ottawa.  Indeed, the Invisible Hand has been
+responsible for no fewer than fifty-eight incendiary fires in factories
+engaged in war work in the United States; and by its sinister direction
+large quantities of our merchant shipping, with passengers and crews,
+have been sent to its doom.  It was the fatal Invisible Hand which blew
+up the great explosive factory in Havre; the Invisible Hand which
+suborned the despicable fellow Lincoln, ex-M.P., to become a traitor and
+endeavour to lead our Grand Fleet into a cunningly-prepared trap laid
+for it by the "Navy of the Kiel Canal."  Therefore one wonders what may
+be the next blow dealt against us by this mysterious unknown influence,
+which seems to be the hand of Satan set upon us.
+
+Is it, indeed, the Invisible Hand which to-day refuses to allow some of
+our Government Departments to be cleansed of the Teuton taint?
+
+Let us take off the gloves and fight this treacherous, unscrupulous, and
+untrustworthy foe with a firm and heavy fist.  We must coddle the Hun no
+longer.  In the past the Home Department has been far too lenient
+towards the enemy in our midst; and though there are signs of
+improvement, yet much more remains to be done.
+
+In these days of the Zeppelin menace and daylight raids by Black Cross
+aeroplanes there is a distinct and ever-present peril in allowing so
+many enemy aliens to be at large.  Further, it is hardly reassuring to
+Englishmen that, while they are going forward to train and to fight,
+their places in business and elsewhere may be taken by enemy aliens who
+have been officially exempted from internment.
+
+The last published official figures given in the House of Commons by the
+Home Department show that no fewer than 7,233 enemy aliens have been
+exempted.  In the London area alone there were still at large 9,355 male
+enemy aliens and 8,207 female enemy aliens, while 471 male enemy aliens
+were still allowed to reside and wander in prohibited areas.
+
+I maintain that if we mean to win--and we do--this state of things must
+cease.  I have raised my voice against it on many occasions.  And
+because I have dared to do so I have received many threats and warnings
+of an untimely end from these uninterned gentry who are allowed to go
+and come about London and other large cities, eager and ready to assist
+the enemy should a raid either by air or land be attempted upon us.
+
+Already we have seen what spies have accomplished in America, and how
+widespread is all their plots.  The recent proceedings in the New York
+Courts and the official publication of the correspondence found upon the
+spies Von Papen and Boy-Ed is still fresh in the memory of readers.
+
+Not only in America, in Canada, and in South Africa--where maps were
+found ready printed showing that colony as a German colony!--but also in
+Australia, there has lately been revealed the subtle influence of this
+same Invisible Hand.
+
+The _Melbourne Age_, one of the most responsible journals in Australia,
+published a long exposure of the whole series of plots in its issues in
+the first week of January, 1916.
+
+In one, under the heading "Treachery in Excelsis," it said:
+
+  We come now to Germany's supreme act of treachery in our regard.  It
+  will be recollected that just prior to the War Australia was visited
+  by the British Association for the Advancement of Science for the
+  purpose of holding here its annual international conference.  Our
+  visitors and guests comprised the most eminent men of science from all
+  countries in the world.  Germany sent four of her most distinguished
+  professors, viz, Dr Albert Penck, Dr E.  Goldstein, Dr Graebner,
+  and Dr Pringsheim.  These learned gentlemen still lingered in the
+  Commonwealth when war was declared.  They immediately approached the
+  Federal Government for permission to return to Germany, representing
+  that they were international scientists, and therefore neutrals, and
+  that although by accident of birth German citizens, they belonged to
+  the whole world, and ought not to be detained.  The Commonwealth
+  Government assented to this proposition, and merely required the
+  savants to take the oath of neutrality.  Dr Eugen Goldstein and Dr
+  Albert Penck promptly took the oath.  The former went off to Java; the
+  latter took ship to England.
+
+Dr Graebner and Dr Pringsheim appeared to be more dilatory than their
+_confreres_, and raised all sorts of objections.  These, however, were
+overruled by the Australian authorities, and at length they took the
+oath.
+
+Proceeding, the _Age_ says:
+
+  Suspicion fell on them, and their correspondence was intercepted and
+  examined, luckily for us, before they sailed.  Their correspondence
+  proved that they were spies, and they were immediately arrested and
+  interned.  Dr Eugen Goldstein got clear away.  But not so Dr Albert
+  Penck.  The last-named professor's baggage was overhauled during his
+  journey to Europe under cabled instructions from the war authorities.
+  It contained even more complete information concerning Australia's
+  military preparations and intentions than the correspondence of
+  Graebner and Pringsheim, and it contained in addition most excellent
+  military contour maps of the country surrounding some of our largest
+  capital cities--maps which could have no vestige of use for any
+  purpose than to serve the ends of a German army of invasion.  The maps
+  and other information collected by these eminent German scientists
+  were not the work of a day or of a month.  They were of a character to
+  prove that Germany had sent the professors to Australia to steal our
+  dearest defence secrets from us, and to repay our hospitality by
+  paving the way for our destruction.  The professors, in short, were
+  official German spies.  When Dr Penck arrived a prisoner in England
+  he was recognised, moreover, as a German scientist who had in past
+  years led several scientific expeditions to the Isle of Wight, overtly
+  to examine the peculiar geology of the island, but really to spy on
+  Portsmouth, Britain's most important naval base in the English
+  Channel.  It is unlikely that Dr Professor Albert Penck will ever see
+  Germany again.  When the above facts are considered, what Australian
+  is there can continue to cherish any doubt as to Germany's designs
+  upon the Commonwealth?
+
+From every British colony there has come to us the same story of the
+clever and ingenious plotting by the enemy alien, just as we have at
+home daily illustrations of him at his evil work.
+
+Our Allies grappled quickly and drastically with the enemy alien at the
+very outbreak of war.  Russia led the way.  Within four days of the
+declaration of war the Tzar signed a ukase ordering the deportation of
+all German and Austrian women and children, the internment of all
+Germans and Austrians, both naturalised and unnaturalised, and, further,
+the sale of all enemy-owned property by public auction!
+
+Thus a clean and entire sweep was made of the plotters and traitors at
+one blow, and the German spy system ceased to exist in the Russian
+Empire.
+
+If we desire to avoid a serious set-back, or even, perhaps, serious
+disaster when the day of the hammer-blow dawns, we must adopt Russia's
+example and intern all enemy aliens, both the naturalised and the
+unnaturalised, irrespective of age or social distinction.
+
+The leopard cannot change his spots, and the born German remains a
+German to the end of his days.  The silly naturalisation farce is far
+too thin a cloak in these days of our national peril, when we are
+fighting for our loved ones, our homes, and our honour.  I admit that to
+intern all naturalised Germans would, in many cases, inflict serious
+discomfort upon many men who have lived with us for years and become to
+all intents and purposes good Britishers.  But in war, and in such a
+world-war as this, one unfortunately cannot discriminate.  Personally I
+am acquainted with some good naturalised Germans, and I also know some
+bad and highly suspicious ones.
+
+But surely at this moment, when all factors point to our ultimate
+victory, we will not allow the Invisible Hand to hold open the gate for
+the entrance of a barbarous enemy into our land?
+
+The hilarious farce of internment and of exemption a few weeks later
+must no longer continue.  Enemy aliens must no longer be allowed to go
+on honeymoons, or men go down to conduct their business in the City.
+Every enemy alien now at large in the United Kingdom must be put again
+behind stout barbed wire, and Mr McKenna's promise, extracted by that
+great demonstration of women under Lady Glanusk at the Mansion House,
+must be kept to the letter to the country.
+
+My demand is that all should be interned, irrespective of whether they
+have paid their fees and taken the so-called "oath" or not.  Every
+German who becomes naturalised as an Englishman is a traitor to his
+country, and we have no room for traitors in this country to-day.
+
+If we are to win we must promptly curb the evil activities of these
+wandering denizens of Lord Haldane's "spiritual home," a sentiment which
+I express whole-heartedly, and with which I know, from the mass of
+correspondence daily reaching me, is shared by a very large number of
+prominent peers, politicians, and citizens.
+
+We must break up the Black Cross of Satan for ever.
+
+CHAPTER NINE.
+
+COMPULSORY SERVICE BRITAIN'S MASTER-STROKE.
+
+No greater evidence could be forthcoming of the absolute determination
+of the British people to fight the War to a finish than the adoption, in
+the teeth of our most cherished prejudices, of the principle of
+compulsory service.  Limited in its action though it may be, so watered
+down, apparently of set purpose, that only a very tiny fraction of men
+will or need be affected by it, the passing of the Act into law
+definitely marks a new departure for Britain, and for the first time
+ranges her alongside the rest of the nations of Europe in emphasising
+the principle--as old as law itself--that in times of stress and danger
+the State has the right to call upon all of its sons to come forward and
+do personal service in defence of the common weal.  That, at least, is a
+very great step in advance.  We can be sure it was noted with pleasure
+and gratification in France and Russia, and with very much the reverse
+feelings in Germany.
+
+Of all the numerous problems which the War forced suddenly into
+prominence, this was by far the most urgent and most important.  No one
+imagined, when the War broke out, that in less than eighteen months we
+should see a measure dealing with compulsory service on the Statute Book
+of England.  That, however, is only to say that few, if any, people
+realised what the War was going to be; I am firmly convinced that if the
+problem had been boldly faced in August, 1914, and the people told
+plainly what it was they were "up against," they would no more have
+hesitated than they did when the time finally came for a decision.  I do
+not think there is the slightest doubt that, in spite of the occasional
+clamour of the cranks who, like the poor, are always with us, the Act is
+on the whole secure in the hearty approval of the great mass of the
+people.
+
+As those who have done me the honour of reading my books will remember,
+I have been for many years a convinced advocate of the principle of
+compulsory national service _for all_.  The principle is now adopted in
+part, and it would serve no good purpose to go again into the arguments
+for and against it.  But there are one or two points to which, even in
+such a book as this, attention may we usefully drawn.  We have to
+remember that for the first time in our history we have undertaken the
+responsibility of waging a land war on a national scale.  That is to
+say, we have taken the field with nations whose armies consist literally
+of the nation in arms.
+
+By hook or by crook we have to maintain our position.  Magnificent as
+has been the response to the call for volunteers, it could not be
+expected that it would be sufficient under such conditions, partly, of
+course, because our people were confronted by a set of conditions to
+which they were absolutely strangers.  It was not that there was any
+real decline in their patriotism--that I do not believe for a moment.
+Shirkers and slackers, of course, there were and are, as there have
+always been and will always be in every nation under the sun.  But upon
+the whole the response of the manhood of England to the appeal for
+recruits was so magnificent that we are justified in regarding it with
+every feeling of pride.  And, convinced as I am of the benefits which
+national service confers upon the nations which adopt it, I should have
+been glad from the bottom of my heart if we had been able to carry this
+War to a successful conclusion on the principles of voluntarism which
+has served us so long.  It would have been a glorious vindication of
+those very principles of liberty which this country went into the War to
+uphold.
+
+But, after all, there is no derogation from the liberty of the subject
+in being called upon to serve the State which protects him and to which
+he owes the very possibility of existence in peace and comfort.  That
+principle is as old as liberty itself; without it liberty, as we
+understand it to-day, would never have been won; perhaps civilisation
+itself would have been centuries farther back.  It is an utter
+misrepresentation to speak as though the conscript, which has been made
+a word of evil omen by the very journals which a few short years ago
+were holding up everything German for our admiration, were a
+much-to-be-pitied individual with no rights and no liberties.  Because
+German drill-sergeants happen to be brutes--as the Germans _en masse_
+have proved themselves to be--there is no reason for thinking that we
+need share their brutality.  The experience of France, of Switzerland,
+of Italy--indeed, of every country except Germany that has adopted the
+principle of compulsion--does not support the comfortable and lazy
+theory that brutes are created by the "militarism" which some of our
+facile writers fail entirely to understand.  It is the innate brutality
+of the Prussian which has produced the horrible results we see springing
+from German militarism, not the principle of compulsion introduced as a
+matter of national self-preservation.
+
+We are an insular Power, and as such we have been able in the past to
+rely almost entirely upon our Fleet for protection against our enemies;
+our land campaigns of the past, glorious though they have often been,
+bear little relation to the present struggle, in which the greatest
+battles of bygone days--battles which have decided the fate of nations--
+would be dwarfed to mere incidents hardly worth a paragraph in the
+official report.  The campaigns of to-day are being fought not by armies
+but by nations in arms--a very important distinction.  Only a few short
+years ago, when armies were tiny compared with the vast hosts of to-day,
+a single battle often decided a war.  To-day battles which dwarf the
+greatest struggles of the past into comparative insignificance are
+nothing more than mere incidents in the far-flung lines of the
+contending hosts.  And the huge size of modern armies has been made
+possible only by the system which takes the young and able-bodied and
+compulsorily trains them with a view to military service when war comes.
+We did not invent that system; indeed, we refused to adopt it long
+after it had come into operation among all other European nations.  But
+we have to meet the system in operation in the field against us, and we
+have hitherto been trying with hastily improvised armies to beat nations
+which have spent half a century in training their manhood in the use of
+arms.  I rejoice that such marvellous efforts have been made, and that
+such wonderful results have been achieved under the voluntary system.
+But that system can never produce "the nation in arms," and it is
+emphatically "the nation in arms" that is required if we are to beat the
+Germans.  Before this frightful struggle ends we shall certainly require
+to make every effort of which we, as a nation and an Empire, are
+capable.
+
+It is a little difficult to understand the opposition to the principle
+of compulsory service.  By the common law of almost all nations the
+State has the right to call upon the individual for assistance in
+protecting the State against the common enemy.  I do not see, indeed,
+how this right can be disputed, for to dispute it would be to cut at the
+very foundations of organised society.  One can, of course, readily
+understand wide differences of opinion as to the advisability or
+necessity of adopting a compulsory system, especially in the middle of a
+great war, but against the principle itself I fail to see any valid
+argument.  _Salus populi lex suprema_.  If the interests of the nation
+demand the introduction of compulsion, whether during a war or not, I
+cannot understand how it can be opposed either in principle or as a
+matter of expediency.
+
+Now it must be quite clearly understood that, so far as Britain is
+concerned, the adoption of the principle of compulsion was purely a
+matter of expediency, and those lifelong opponents of compulsory service
+who found themselves able to support the Act sacrificed none of their
+convictions or principles in doing so.  We had reached a stage in the
+War when the problem of finding enough men to keep our armies in the
+field up to full strength had become critical.  Mr Asquith had pledged
+himself--quite rightly, as I think--that the married men who enlisted
+under the Derby group system should not be called up while any
+considerable number of single slackers remained deaf to every call that
+was made upon them.  In this I believe he was absolutely right, and I
+believe he had behind him the vast preponderance of intelligent opinion
+in the country, including, though the fact has been disputed, the bulk
+of the working-class population.  We were unquestionably drafting into
+the Army too large a proportion of married men, and widows and orphans
+were being made at a rate that was positively appalling.  It was quite
+obvious that something must be done to put a stop to this condition of
+things, and the famous pledge of Mr Asquith was the result.  And when
+it was found that the unmarried men still remained outside the Army, the
+passage into law of a measure of compulsion could be nothing more than a
+matter of time.
+
+The Act was frankly a temporising measure, and my own personal belief is
+that it does not go nearly far enough.  Mr Asquith has declared that he
+does not think the situation calls for a measure of general compulsion,
+and he must be in possession of facts which are hidden from the public.
+Present indications suggest that he is right; whether he was wise to
+bolt and bar the door to general compulsion so emphatically as he did is
+another matter.  It was certainly a very remarkable statement of Lord
+Kitchener, reported to the House of Commons by Mr Walter Long, that the
+Act as it stood would provide all the men required to ensure victory, a
+statement which seems hardly to have attracted the attention that it
+deserved.  Both Mr Asquith and Lord Kitchener may be right, and it is
+certainly true that our prospects are brighter than they have been for
+many months.
+
+In view of what may conceivably happen in the future, there is one
+misconception with regard to national service which it is perhaps worth
+while to try to clear up.  It is too hastily assumed that the men who
+are swept into the net of a compulsory system are necessarily drafted to
+the fighting ranks.  This, of course, is a mistake pure and simple.  One
+of the greatest advantages of the compulsory system is that by its means
+men can be employed just at the work where their services are most
+needed.  It is quite certain that had we had a compulsory service system
+in operation when the War broke out we should have seen less of the
+enlistment into the fighting services of men whose brains and muscles
+were urgently needed in other directions.  We should not, for instance,
+have seen three hundred thousand miners sent to the trenches while we
+were short of coal at home; we should not have seen our munition works
+held up through shortage of skilled labour consequent upon high-class
+mechanics joining the fighting line.  Each man would have been sent to
+serve where he was most needed, and this, it seems to me, is one of the
+strongest arguments that can be adduced in favour of the principle of
+compulsion.
+
+Under all the circumstances the adoption of compulsion has been achieved
+with wonderfully little disturbance.  There have been none of those wild
+outbreaks of popular passion which were so strenuously forecasted by the
+thick-and-thin opponents of compulsion.  As my readers are, of course,
+aware, the adoption of compulsion by President Lincoln during the
+American Civil War was followed by serious disturbances which had to be
+suppressed by troops brought from the front, and which caused grievous
+loss of life.  We have seen nothing of the kind here, and I do not think
+we are likely to do so.  The country is united and determined to win the
+War, and the anti-conscription efforts of certain misguided folk have
+been received with the contempt they deserved.  The quiet acceptance of
+the Act is all the more remarkable when we remember that owing to the
+operation of the censorship the people generally were very ill-informed
+about the War, and it is certain that up to quite a recent date they did
+not realise all that was involved or the magnitude of the task we had
+undertaken.  The wonder is not that a system of compulsion became
+necessary, but that under the bad system of secrecy we succeeded in
+raising armies totalling some three millions of men by the voluntary
+plan.  There could be no greater testimony to the genuine patriotism of
+the workers of England.  Happily, the country is now more fully awake to
+the facts of the situation, and has achieved a better realisation of
+what the struggle really means.
+
+Nothing has been more remarkable than the attitude of Labour on this
+subject.  We have been told over and over again that the workers of
+Britain would never accept the principle of compulsion; we have found,
+in fact, that it has gained the support of all that is best in the
+Labour ranks.  There can be no doubt that one of the greatest
+difficulties in the way was the hasty and ill-advised resolution passed
+by the Trade Union Congress at Bristol in January, 1915.  It is not
+necessary to enter into the causes which led to the passing of that most
+unhappy resolution.  Suffice it to say that it put the Trade Unionists
+in the position of declaring that they would prefer to see the Empire go
+to ruin rather than see the principle of compulsion introduced.  I felt
+at the time--and subsequent events have justified my belief--that this
+was a grave libel upon the patriotism of our workers.  The Merthyr
+by-election, when the official Liberal and Labour candidate was
+decisively beaten by an Independent candidate, who won a tremendous
+victory on a straight compulsion issue in a constituency which had
+always been regarded as a stronghold of every idea that would be opposed
+to compulsion, came as a dramatic surprise.  In all probability that
+election did more than any other single thing to make compulsion
+possible, and it certainly showed that the working classes of this
+country had changed their minds on a subject on which it was supposed
+their minds were irrevocably made up.  We were to learn later that their
+opposition to compulsion was based not on compulsion itself, but on the
+fear that conscripts would be used to settle industrial troubles as was
+done in the case of the French railway strike.  But the assurance on
+this head given by Mr Asquith seems to have removed what latent
+hostility there was to the proposals of the Government, and as a result
+there is every prospect that the Act will work as smoothly as we could
+desire or expect.
+
+Under all the circumstances it is easy to sympathise with the attitude
+of the Labour leaders when they met for the Trade Union Congress of
+1916.  They found themselves faced with the resolution passed twelve
+months before under very different circumstances.  They knew better--
+they had been told frankly by Lord Kitchener--the extreme urgency of our
+needs, and they certainly had no desire to embarrass the Government or
+stand in the way of the Empire winning the victory.  But we have to
+recognise the facts of human nature.  It is not easy for any of us to
+eat our words, and yet it seemed as if the Congress must either do so or
+take up a frankly disloyal attitude.  They were deeply pledged against
+compulsion, and it needs no very powerful effort of the imagination to
+see that they were in a position of some difficulty.
+
+Luckily, a way was found out of the seeming _impasse_.  The Congress
+decided to adhere to its resolution condemning compulsory service as a
+matter of principle, but it decisively defeated a proposal to work for
+the repeal of the Act which had already been passed.  The national
+spirit of compromise came strongly to the front.  I wrote before the
+Congress met: "However difficult it may be for them to swallow the very
+definite declaration of the last Congress, I think the majority of them,
+if the present recruiting movement fails, will loyally accept the
+logical sequel."  Those words were abundantly justified.  In view of the
+partial failure of Lord Derby's scheme, the Congress took the natural
+and proper view.  Abating none of their strongly held objections to
+compulsion, they accepted the Bill as the lesser of two evils: better
+put up with a modified measure of compulsion now than endure defeat,
+with all the horrors that it would imply, in the future.  And there can
+be no reasonable doubt that that view is far more widely held among the
+working classes than is shown by the voting of a caucus in which the
+most extreme Socialist and Syndicalist element has secured a measure of
+representation which it does not deserve.
+
+As to whether the Act will give us all the men we need, we can only go
+on and hope for the best.  Lord Kitchener apparently thinks it will, and
+he ought to be in a position to know.  But we have to remember that in
+modern warfare the drain upon an army and the wastage of men--not only
+from actual casualties in fighting, but from sickness and other causes--
+is appalling.  It has been officially stated that our losses by wastage
+from all causes amount to _fifteen per cent, per month_ of all the
+forces in the field.  That is to say, that if we have a million men
+under arms they will have to be replaced every six months!  And even
+this appalling rate of loss might well be exceeded if fighting became
+very severe; if, for instance, we had to fight battles such as the first
+and second battles of Ypres.  Fighting on an even larger scale, it must
+be remembered, is only too probable if the Allies undertake the "big
+push" which shall throw the Huns out of their entrenchments in the West,
+to say nothing of a possible advance from Salonica and more fighting in
+Mesopotamia.  It will thus be seen that the requirements of the Army in
+the matter of drafts during the next few months will be on a gigantic
+scale, and we cannot afford to run the risk of being short of men.
+
+The time is assuredly coming when the German reserves will begin to give
+out in view of the enormous extent of front they had to defend.  That
+will be the opportunity of the Allies; and unless we are then in a
+position swiftly to make good all possible losses and fling more and
+ever more men into the fight to administer the _coup de grace_, the War
+may well drag on--almost certainly it would drag on--to an inconclusive
+ending which would be only one remove less disastrous than defeat.  It
+is against such a possibility as this that we have to guard, and we can
+only do so by deciding that, cost what it may--whether by compulsion or
+not, whether only the single men are taken or whether every able-bodied
+man shall be swept into the ranks--the fighting lines of our armies
+shall be maintained at fighting strength.  So much we owe to ourselves,
+to our Empire, and to the thousands of gallant souls who have given
+their all in order that we may live out our lives in peace.  To falter
+now would be not only ingratitude to the fallen, but would be the
+blackest treachery to everything which we know as civilisation.
+
+Mr Asquith has declared that he will be no party to any further measure
+of general compulsion.  I can only assume that he means by this that he
+is confident of victory under existing circumstances, and I hope and
+believe he is right.  But it would be foolish to disguise from ourselves
+that war is a very "chancy" and uncertain business, and that there are
+few subjects upon which it is more foolhardy to dogmatise.  We have seen
+something during this War of the wreck which has fallen on the
+reputations of the military "experts."  And, believe we never so
+strongly in victory, there is no disguising the fact that our
+expectations may be falsified by events.  In such a case--supposing we
+require more men than we can obtain by the measure of limited compulsion
+that we have adopted--are we to lose the War for want of stronger
+measures?  That will hardly, I think, be contended, and if the men
+wanted are not forthcoming they must be found by sterner measures.
+
+"We must win or go under" is the great truth we have to keep for ever
+before our eyes and before the eyes of our fellow-countrymen.  And to
+secure victory there must be no half-measures.  If Mr Asquith finds
+himself unable to undertake the task of raising the men urgently
+needed--should more be required--other men and other measures must fill
+the gaps.  On that point, at least, there must be no faltering.
+
+I do not believe the workers to-day are troubling themselves very
+greatly about the nice ethical points for or against the principle of
+compulsion.  They are judging on broad lines, and I am confident they
+view the question in a light very different from that in which they
+regarded it when the War broke out.  Since those days they have learnt
+from the example of Belgium and France what is involved in German rule,
+and their change of views has been helped by a realisation of the
+magnitude of the task which lies before us.  They know that the War is
+for us a matter of self-preservation, and I believe such opposition to
+compulsion as still survives comes solely from other and more
+doctrinaire classes.  What the country asks from the Government is a
+clear and unmistakable lead.  If the Government will but take the nation
+fully and frankly into its confidence, if those who are entitled to
+speak for the nation will call upon the nation for the greatest and
+supremest effort of its history, I do not believe there will be any
+hesitation in the response whether we decide to extend the principle of
+compulsion or not.  I believe the result will be to astonish and
+confound those who have more or less openly suggested that the spirit of
+England is not what it was, and that the Englishman has lost in a great
+measure the stern invincibility and determination which in his
+forefathers made England what she is and has always been.
+
+So far we have adopted what Lord Lansdowne has described as "a
+homeopathic dose" of compulsion.  The description is apt; I hope the
+dose will be sufficient to dispel the disease.  But there is one point
+on which we must be on our guard: the list of "reserved" trades whose
+men are not to be taken for the Army is growing at an alarming rate.  We
+know that one of the results of this has been to cut down very seriously
+the number of men who ought to have joined the colours under Lord
+Derby's group scheme; we must be careful lest we lose more men than we
+should from the same cause under the Compulsion Act.  It is necessary,
+of course, that our trade must be kept going as far as possible;
+otherwise we shall not be able to pay for the War.
+
+But we must remember at the same time that victory is and must be our
+first consideration, for without this we shall have no trade to look
+after.  And if, in our eagerness to conserve our trade, we neglect or
+starve the fighting forces, we shall pay a terrible and appalling
+penalty.  That is the worst of doing things by halves; one generally
+finds in the long run that it would have been better and cheaper to have
+made a good job at the first.  It is more than likely that the
+"reserved" occupations will turn out to be the crux of the whole
+question, and the rapidly growing lists give rise to a feeling of
+apprehension as to whether we shall not fail, if they are extended
+indefinitely, to get the men we require.  I earnestly hope that this
+most important subject is receiving careful attention, and that we shall
+have such periodical revisions of the lists as experience may show to be
+necessary.  All will be well so long as we do not risk, for the sake of
+supposed trade advantages, any shortage of men in the actual fighting
+lines.
+
+The willing adoption by our people of the principle of compulsion has
+been Britain's master-stroke in this war.  Nothing else, I am convinced,
+could have had such an effect upon our friends, our enemies, and the
+neutral nations, whether friendly to us or the reverse.  Nothing else
+could have shown so clearly the unalterable determination of the British
+people, or proved so unmistakably that at length--late, it is true, but
+better late than never--the cold and deadly pertinacity of Britain, the
+dour temper which never knows when it is beaten and never lets go, has
+been fully roused.  Britain, it is said, wins but one victory in every
+war, but that victory is the last.  That is one victory we mean to win
+in this War, if it takes us ten or twenty years to do it.  We fought
+Napoleon for twenty years; we won the last victory at Waterloo.  It will
+not be twenty years before the Allies win the victory that shall put an
+end to the pretensions of the upstart who aspires to be the Napoleon of
+the twentieth century.
+
+CHAPTER TEN.
+
+GERMANY'S COLOSSAL BLUNDERS.
+
+It is the fashion of our arm-chair critics and pessimists to talk and
+write as though all the triumphs of the campaign belonged to Germany,
+while all the mistakes and misfortunes were the exclusive attributes of
+the Allies.  The perfection of the German military machine is held up
+eternally for our admiration; we are told day by day--and several times
+a day--to pay tributes of wondering admiration to the marvels Germany
+has accomplished.  It is pointed out to us how much of her enemies'
+territory she has occupied, and even, sometimes, how impossible it will
+ever be to turn her out.  We are even besought by certain faint-hearts
+to make peace while we can on the "generous" terms which Germany has
+announced herself willing to concede if we will only admit her
+over-lordship of Europe, an admission we have not the slightest
+intention of making either now or in the future.
+
+Now I am not going to deny that we and the rest of the Allies have made
+mistakes, alike in policy, strategy, and tactics; in fact, if you will,
+in every field of the War.  But the nation that can wage war without
+making mistakes has yet to be discovered, and it is certain that if such
+a nation ever arises it will speedily dominate the world.  Let it be
+admitted that we have made mistakes in plenty, and that we shall make
+many more before we see the end of this terrible business.  It still
+remains true that the mistakes of the Allies have been as dust in the
+balance compared with those made by Germany.  I fear many of my readers
+may think this a hard saying, but I shall try to demonstrate its literal
+truth.
+
+The first and greatest of the mistakes made by the Allied nations was
+that they failed to foresee years ago that the War was inevitable, and
+that Germany was firmly resolved that it should break out just when it
+was most convenient to her.  There we have, in a nutshell, the basis of
+all our troubles.  Of Germany's intentions in the matter there has not
+been a shadow of doubt; thinkers like Mr Frederic Harrison, and
+soldiers like Lord Roberts, saw very clearly what was coming, and even
+that much-abused individual, "the man in the street," has for years had
+more than an uneasy suspicion that Germany was plotting mischief.  The
+famous Kruger telegram, the trouble at Samoa, the visit of the "Panther"
+to Agadir, the numberless occasions during the past few years when
+Germany has interfered in matters which were no concern of hers, ought
+surely to have been enough to put us on our guard.  And on top of all
+this we have Lord Haldane's bland admission that he came back from his
+Berlin visit feeling "very uneasy" as to Germany's intentions.  Just
+after war broke out a very old friend of my own--a man who knows Germany
+and the Germans well--wrote to remind me that seven or eight years ago
+he prophesied that war would break out in 1914, when the Kiel Canal
+widening was to be completed.
+
+I do not see how, in the face of all these facts, we can pretend for an
+instant that we had not ample warning of the cataclysm which has
+overtaken the world.  I do not say that we were any blinder than the
+rest of those who are now on our side, but I do say that our failure to
+make ready in time was the most powerful factor in bringing about the
+War, and gave Germany an initial advantage which we are now only
+beginning to wrest from her.  For Germany was ready--ready down to the
+last proverbial button on her soldiers' gaiters--and nothing but the
+gigantic blunders she has made in the conduct of the War has saved
+civilisation from being overrun by the hordes whom the Kaiser is proud
+to recognise as the modern successors of Attila.  Had the nations of
+Europe dropped their mutual jealousies five years ago, and clearly
+warned Germany that the first act of aggression on her part would bring
+all of them into the field against her, how different would have been
+the course of modern history!
+
+Let us go back to the beginning of things and examine some of Germany's
+blunders from the very outset.  We have, in the first place, ample
+evidence that Germany counted with confidence that the War would be
+short--that she would, in effect, repeat her triumph of 1870-71 on a
+grander scale.  We know that this was so from the evidence of her own
+writers and statesmen and people, both before and since the War began.
+The programme was, on paper, delightfully simple.  In view of the solemn
+treaties into which Germany had entered, France had refrained from
+fortifying her Belgian frontier.
+
+This simplified matters for Germany.  Belgian neutrality was to be
+contemptuously violated and France attacked on her weakest front, the
+inconvenient line of fortresses along the Rhine being thus carefully
+avoided.  Belgium, it was calculated, would not dare to resist her
+mighty adversary, or, if she did, so much the worse for her.  France was
+to be shattered in a brief campaign--so effectively shattered, as
+Germans themselves boasted, that she could never again be a menace.
+England, fat and lazy England, it was confidently reckoned, would not
+interfere, or could not interfere in time on land.  France disabled
+permanently, the victorious Germans were to turn on slow-moving Russia,
+whose mobilisation could not be completed for months, and who was to be
+hopelessly smashed by the weight of the combined Austro-German arms
+before she could get her giant legions into the field.  Serbia, of
+course, the ostensible cause of all the trouble, would be of no account,
+and could be crushed with hardly an effort, leaving the way open for
+German domination through Bulgaria and Turkey, and on to Persian
+Mesopotamia and the East.  England, the chief adversary in the German
+dream of world-power, was to be left to be settled with at a more
+auspicious season.
+
+Now, we have had our trials and disappointments since war broke out, and
+we shall have more, but I ask in sober seriousness if a fraction of our
+plans have gone wrong so completely as has every single factor upon
+which Germany counted for the success of her scheme?  We know what
+happened.  Belgium refused to barter her honour for peace, and it is
+beyond question that the three weeks' delay her heroic resistance
+secured for the Allies saved Europe.  France showed herself as great as
+of old, and her sons flung themselves into the fight with a gallantry
+which has proved unconquerable.  The outrage on Belgium brought England
+into the fray, and her "contemptible little army" played no inglorious
+part in shattering the German advance.  Russia mobilised with a speed
+which startled the world, and her legions were thundering at the gates
+of Germany weeks ahead of what the Germans had been pleased to regard as
+the "schedule time."  Serbia threw back the Austrian armies in an
+appalling defeat, and in a very few weeks Germany must have realised
+that she had to face that long and dragging war which every single one
+of her military writers had foretold must prove ruinous to her.  When I
+say "Germany" I mean, of course, the German military authorities; the
+German people were kept in an abysmal ignorance of the facts of the
+case.  It is not too much to say that within three months of the
+outbreak of the War the German Higher Command must have begun to realise
+that whatever might be the outcome of the struggle it was not going to
+be a German triumph.  And we may be sure that they have since realised
+it with ever-growing clearness.
+
+It cannot, of course, be supposed that the Germans neglected altogether
+the possibility that England might join the Alliance against them,
+though there is very good ground for the belief that they were vastly
+surprised that we should fight them over "a scrap of paper."  But they
+took the risk, and they took it the more readily because they had for
+years been assured that England, if not too proud to fight, was at least
+too wealthy and too lazy to have any stomach for such an enterprise as
+an armed conflict with the supermen of Germany.  Hence the insolent
+offers that were made to buy us off at the expense of France.  And there
+is little doubt that the Germans believed that even if we did come in we
+should be of trifling account in the land war, while they reckoned that
+they could at least keep their Fleet in safety until their submarines
+had either starved us into submission or had so weakened our Fleet that
+it could hope to operate at sea with a reasonable chance of success.
+They thought, in fact, that as a factor in a continental war England
+could safely be neglected.  Certain is it that they never for a moment
+dreamed that England could raise and put into the field armies on the
+scale of millions which, in respect of equipment and training, would
+rival or eclipse anything that Germany could show to the world.
+
+Yet that is precisely what England has done.  Man for man the British
+Army is superior to that of Germany, and it is better trained and better
+equipped.  And it has not yet developed its full fighting force, while
+the armies of Germany, weakened by eighteen months of terrific fighting,
+have long passed their zenith.  Germany has squandered her best troops,
+and is beginning at last to fall back on inferior organisations; we have
+millions of the pick of the nation who have not yet taken the field.
+They will do so in good time, and with ample reserves behind them.
+"General French's contemptible little army" has been a surprise for the
+Kaiser.
+
+So much for German blunders on land; what can we say about her blunders
+at sea?  The policy of attrition has failed lamentably, and we are not
+yet starved out by the submarines or greatly perturbed by the threats of
+new "frightfulness" which periodically emanate from Berlin.  Our Fleet
+is actually stronger than it was when war began; Germany has lost far
+more in proportion, and her losses in cruisers--the eyes and ears of the
+battle squadrons--have been particularly disastrous.  The German flag,
+except as shown by the submarine pirates and occasional raiders, has
+vanished from the oceans of the world, and with it has gone Germany's
+gigantic overseas trade, which was the very life-blood of her industrial
+prosperity.
+
+The probable attitude of England towards the War must have been the
+subject of a good deal of speculation in the Wilhelmstrasse before
+Germany threw down the gauntlet to the world, and here again we have an
+excellent example of the blundering of German diplomacy.  We shall never
+know exactly what advice Prince Lichnowsky gave from London to his
+Imperial master.  It is said that he warned the Kaiser not to allow
+himself to run away with the idea that England was too much occupied
+with internal disputes to fight.  However that may be, there is every
+reason for thinking that those who at the time were preaching the
+possibility of civil war in Ireland did much to convince Germany that
+the time was ripe for the great adventure.  The Germans failed, in the
+blundering German way, to realise that while England's troubles are her
+own, her cause is the cause of humanity and civilisation, and that the
+first threat of attack on either would bring her warring parties into
+one formidable cohesion which would defy any possible menace of trouble
+within.  That is precisely what happened, and it must have been the
+surprise of their lives for the German diplomats.
+
+The Colonies, as we know, represented in the eyes of the Germans so much
+ripe fruit ready at a touch to drop from the rotten parent tree.  India
+was seething with revolt--according to the German war party; South
+Africa was represented as ready to throw itself into the lap of Germany
+for the sake of shaking off the very shadowy British yoke.  Can any of
+the mistakes we have made in politics or strategy match this record of
+blundering ineptitude?  We know how India and the Dominions and South
+Africa responded to the call of Empire.  India, Canada, and Australia
+have sealed anew with their blood the tie which binds them to the Mother
+Country; to-day a Dutch South African is busy turning the Germans out of
+the last bit which remains to them of their once huge Colonial Empire.
+Perhaps we blundered in our diplomacy in the Balkans, but at least we
+have not blundered, as the Germans have done, in every part of the world
+where chance of blundering lay open to us.
+
+So far I have dealt only with German blunders, political and military,
+in anticipation of war.  Let us turn now to some of her blunders in the
+actual conduct of operations in the field.  I do not mean the blunders
+of subordinates, but the mistakes of strategy and policy which are
+capable of ruining the best-planned and most carefully-thought-out
+campaign.
+
+The violation of the neutrality of Belgium may have been an advantage
+from the point of view of strategy; whether it was or not, the Germans
+thought it was, and that was good enough for them.  If it would be an
+advantage to Germany, they were prepared to undertake it, and treaty
+obligations troubled them not one whit.  That it would instantly range
+all civilised opinion against them seems never to have entered their
+heads.  But even after they had crossed Belgium their grand strategy was
+lamentable.  They succumbed to the lure of Paris at a time when they
+ought to have been thinking solely of the northern ports of France,
+which were practically open to them, and Paris proved to be the magnet
+which drew them on to their undoing.
+
+The menace to Paris roused the French to fury, and produced superhuman
+exertions which a contest on the soil of France elsewhere might very
+possibly not have evoked.  Moreover, the German threat at Paris gave the
+English time to come into action with what proved to be decisive effect.
+Was there no German blundering here?  What, I wonder, would have been
+the result if the Germans had in those early days of the War flung all
+their force at the coasts of Northern France?  How should we have met
+the menace with the sea bases largely in German hands?  What would have
+been our position in the naval warfare to-day?
+
+And even with Paris almost in their grasp, the Germans failed--failed as
+lamentably as they possibly could.  They never even suspected the
+existence of that great army of Paris which General Manoury had formed
+under their very noses, as it were.  And when on that fatal day Von
+Kluck found himself faced with a new danger from that great army which
+issued from the gates of the French capital, what did he do?  He
+committed a blunder which has been condemned by every military writer by
+trying to march his retreating columns across the front of the British
+Army which lay parallel to the line of his retreat.  No doubt he
+reckoned that after its terrific gruelling in the great retreat the
+British Army was in no shape to take offensive action against him.  But
+it was his business to know, not to think; probably his Teutonic
+arrogance led him to believe that no troops after such a retreat could
+stand up against the pick of the German arms.  He was soon undeceived.
+General Joffre struck at once and with all his might, seizing with the
+truest military genius and insight the psychological moment.  The French
+and British flung themselves upon the badly shaken enemy, and in a few
+short days the victory of the Marne had been won.
+
+Whatever we may think of what has happened since, it is certain that the
+battle of the Marne will be recognised in the future as one of the great
+decisive battles of the world.  For it smashed beyond repair the German
+strategic scheme.  German blundering alone made victory possible, for at
+the time the battle was fought the Germans were unquestionably superior
+to the Allies in every factor which should have given them the victory
+had they acted on sound lines.  The machine was there--the machine upon
+which the Germans have all along relied--but the human control broke
+down, and disaster followed.  Among all the mistakes which had been made
+by the Allies, can the keenest critic discover anything to compare with
+this?
+
+A prominent feature of the German strategy has been the attack of their
+infantry in dense masses; their commanders have flung men forward in
+solid columns in the hope of overwhelming their enemies by sheer weight
+of numbers.  This has been a matter of considered policy; attack in this
+formation has been practised at the German manoeuvres for years.  The
+German commanders took no notice of those military critics of other
+nations who assured them that with modern weapons such tactics could
+only meet with irretrievable disaster.  With true Prussian cocksureness,
+and knowing nothing of war since the days when quick-firing guns and
+magazine rifles had revolutionised war, they insisted that they were
+right, and that German hardihood would be proof against even the most
+appalling losses.  They have practised what they preached, since there
+was no possibility of re-training their men in time of war, and the
+result has been daughter on such a scale as the world has never seen.
+Not once, but a hundred times have German massed attacks across open
+country simply melted away before the fire which greeted them, and in
+this way Germany has lost untold thousands of men who, had they been
+intelligently used, might have gone far to win the War.
+
+This, again, is not an example of the mistakes made by subordinate
+commanders in the field, but a settled matter of policy approved by the
+highest German military experts, and proved hopelessly wrong under the
+actual test of war.  Attacks by massed guns and not by massed infantry
+have been the most powerful factors in winning the German successes.  We
+saw in the appalling slaughter of the great battle of Ypres how little
+infantry, resolute and well handled, have to fear from the advance of
+men who simply come on in solid masses to be shot down.
+
+It has long been a part of the German creed that "frightfulness" in war
+pays.  The avowed German policy is that a conquered nation shall be left
+"nothing but its eyes to weep with."  The idea, of course, is that any
+nation which has the misfortune to incur Germany's resentment shall be
+so completely terrorised and oppressed that anything in the shape of a
+spirit of resistance shall be utterly crushed out in a welter of blood
+and savagery before which a civilised community must sink appalled.
+Here we have a simple explanation of the crimes which staggered the
+world after the invasion of Belgium.  It was all a part of the German
+policy that the Belgian civilians should be tortured, outraged, and
+murdered, that their towns should be laid waste, that monuments of an
+ancient civilisation which even the Huns of old respected should be
+destroyed by the newest apostles of "kultur."  Eight hundred civilians
+were massacred at Dinant in cold blood to show the Belgians how hopeless
+it was to resist Germany; hundreds of women have been violated in the
+same cause; hundreds of churches have been destroyed; dozens of villages
+have been laid in ashes.  And all this, let it be remembered--let it,
+indeed, never be forgotten--was the result not of war-maddened soldiers
+losing their heads and their manhood, but of a deliberate policy
+deliberately adopted by the rulers of Germany.
+
+In every war and in every army there happen, in hot blood, incidents
+over which humanity weeps; human nature being what it is, excesses are
+sometimes unavoidable.  But it has been left to modern Germany to
+elevate murder and violence and destruction to a science; she has in
+this respect set up a record which would shame a Red Indian, and from
+which the great warring and plundering nations of old would have shrunk
+appalled.  The history of war for centuries has given us nothing to
+approach in horror the German devastation of Belgium and of Poland,
+unless we except the massacres of the Armenians by Germany's Turkish
+Allies with Germany's connivance and approval.
+
+Now I am quite certain that the criminality of these proceedings
+troubles the German nation not one whit.  But I am equally certain that
+they will be seriously troubled when they realise that "frightfulness"
+is what is in their eyes far worse than a crime; it is a blunder.  When
+the German Hyde has recovered from his debauch of bestiality and
+violence, we may expect the German Jekyll to begin assuring us that he
+is really a very decent sort of fellow after all.  For Jekyll will come
+some day to realise that Hyde's crimes have not helped his cause, that
+Hyde was really not merely a savage--that he could accept without a
+pang--but that he was a sad blunderer.  That, to the German, is the real
+unforgivable sin.  And blunderer in his campaign of "frightfulness" the
+German assuredly has been and is.  The policy of terrorism has been a
+complete failure; it has failed in Belgium, it has failed in France, it
+has failed in Serbia, it has failed in Poland, it has failed afloat, and
+it has failed in the air.  It is a record of blood and murder unredeemed
+by a solitary success; it has steeled the hearts and the resolution of
+all to whom it has been applied, and among the neutral nations it has
+provoked feelings which cause nausea whenever Germany is mentioned.
+
+In the face of unmentionable horrors--unmentionable except in the pages
+of official reports--Belgium has steadily refused to have any traffic
+whatever with the Huns; her soldiers are preparing to-day to take their
+full meed of vengeance of those who have made a desert of her smiling
+land.  Serbia is still unconquered, though her land is occupied and
+devastated.  Poland spurns the German yoke.  Britain not only is
+undismayed, but is more firmly resolved than ever to make an end for
+good and all of German pretensions.  Russia is striking shrewd blows,
+and will strike yet harder in the near future.  Italy is steadily
+preparing for greater things.  France is her own great self, and is
+waiting with unconquerable resolution for the appointed hour.  Only in
+Germany and her Allies do we discover a growing spirit of apprehension
+and of weakening purpose.  Can we say in the face of all these things
+that the policy of "frightfulness" has been anything but a blunder of
+the first magnitude?
+
+It is commonly assumed that German savagery reached its height in the
+sinking of the "Lusitania," and certainly that crime struck the
+conscience of civilisation more forcibly than the horrors in Belgium,
+partly because it was a direct object-lesson of the depths to which
+modern Germany was capable of descending.  But in sober truth the
+"Lusitania" outrage was nothing in comparison with what had been done in
+Belgium.  There Germany's record of horrors was so atrocious that no
+respectable newspaper could reproduce the evidence gathered by the
+French Official Commission, and only those who had read the original
+could form any conception of what the reality must have been.  The
+victims of the "Lusitania" at least died swiftly and comparatively
+painlessly; Belgium's lot was in too many cases such that death would
+have been infinitely preferable.  But to the sinking of the "Lusitania"
+is to be attributed the uprising of the wrath of the United States, who
+saw over a hundred of her citizens simply murdered in cold blood.
+
+It is not for us to criticise the action the United States may think fit
+to adopt in defence of its own people, but it is certain that nine
+Americans out of ten are far ahead of their Government in their opinion
+of what ought to be done.  What will be done is a matter for the
+Americans themselves, and we have no right to interfere.  But it is at
+least to be regretted, in the interest of international morality and
+good faith, that the United States, as the foremost of the neutral
+nations, did not see fit to protest against German violation of
+international law until the interests of American citizens were directly
+attacked.  The failure of the neutral nations to make such a protest has
+probably done untold harm to the prospects of international agreements
+in the future.  What value, for instance, will the world, in days to
+come, attach to the proceedings of a Hague Convention whose solemn
+agreements Germany has been permitted to infringe without a word of
+protest from neutrals who shared in its deliberations and acquiesced in
+its decisions?
+
+German disregard of the decencies of international life and her lack of
+understanding of the feelings of other nations have been abundantly
+shown in the conspiracy of intimidation which has been carried on in the
+United States.  It seemed quite natural to the Germans that their
+Embassy in Washington should be made the head centre for plots which
+were calculated, and intended, to provoke a conflict between the United
+States and Great Britain.  They seem to have been quite incapable of
+realising that the United States might possibly object to being made the
+cat's-paw of German diplomacy, just as they seem to have thought that
+the blowing up of American munition works to prevent supplies reaching
+the Allies was a proceeding about which Americans could have no real
+reason to complain.  In the same manner they appear to have thought that
+the forgery of United States passports for the use of their spies in
+England was a mere trifle, undeserving of the slightest censure,
+regardless of the fact that no other nation in the world would stoop to
+such unspeakable meanness.
+
+The result of their blundering is that they have brought themselves
+within measurable distance of having a war with America on their hands,
+and but for the patience of President Wilson war would have broken out
+long ago.  It is believed, of course, that for some reasons war with the
+United States would serve the German purpose at the present moment by
+giving them an excuse for making peace on the plausible ground that they
+could not fight the whole world; but whatever may be the truth about
+this now, it was certainly not the truth in the early days of the War
+when the Germans were overwhelmingly confident that they could win.
+Even then they were flouting the United States in every possible way,
+and showing the greatest contempt for the greatest of the neutral
+nations.  It was all of a piece with the blundering diplomacy which has
+been exhibited in every quarter of the world.
+
+The complete failure of Germany to placate Italy is another blunder
+which will have a great effect in the final outcome of the War.  Perhaps
+Austria in those days was not quite so servile to her German masters as
+she is to-day.  In any case the attempt failed; and if we are to measure
+blunders in diplomacy, we can quite justifiably set the German failure
+in this respect against our own supposed failure in the Balkans with the
+confidence that the Germans have at least lost as much as we did--
+probably they have lost a great deal more.  The Germans undoubtedly
+relied upon Bulgaria to overcome the Serbian resistance, just as they
+relied upon the Turk to help them turn us out of Egypt and open up a
+direct German route to Persia and India and the East generally.  But
+what are the facts of the situation?  There is every reason to believe
+that relations between the Germans and their Allies are none too
+cordial.  Bulgar and Turk alike hate Teutonic arrogance, and both are
+beginning to realise that they have been duped.  There is every reason
+to think that the Bulgars are already repenting of their bargain, while
+the Turks, in the loss of Erzerum, see a vital blow struck by the
+Russians at the very heart of their Empire.  Moreover, we know that the
+huge supplies which the Germans hoped to draw from both Turkey and
+Bulgaria are not forthcoming for the simple reason that they do not
+exist.  Turkey unmistakably is tottering to her final fall, and then, we
+may well ask, what becomes of the grandiose German plans for an advance
+on Egypt, Mesopotamia, and India?  Can we say that in this direction,
+more than in others, the German plans have gone well?
+
+The Dardanelles expedition is popularly held to be the greatest blunder
+of our campaign.  But are we quite so sure that, failure though it was,
+it was all lost effort, or even, as things were, that it was not worth
+the price we paid?  That is a question which will be settled only by the
+historian of the future.  But to those who see in it only the failure of
+a great effort and the sacrifice of many gallant lives it may be pointed
+out that it had very important results.
+
+In the first place, it held up at least half a million Turks who would
+have been very useful elsewhere, it brought the enemy a loss of probably
+200,000 men, it sensibly weakened his powers of resistance, and in all
+probability it very materially assisted the Russians to win their great
+victory at Erzerum.  It undoubtedly did much to stave off the threatened
+attack on Egypt and the Suez Canal, and it probably saved our expedition
+in Mesopotamia from utter disaster.  I do not say all these things could
+not have been achieved otherwise, but I do feel that in balancing gains
+and losses we have a right to claim that even in the tragedy of the
+Dardanelles there are compensations to be found if we try to look at the
+matter in a cool and impartial light.  Most unfortunately the issue has
+been clouded by the introduction of the personal element as between Mr
+Churchill and Sir John Fisher, and until the heat of that controversy
+has cooled down it is unlikely that the problem of the Dardanelles will
+receive anything like fair and adequate consideration.
+
+The worst of our blunders was our unpreparedness, and for it we are
+paying a heavy price.  But since we set our hands to the plough we have
+made such efforts as no nation has ever made in the history of the
+world; and if we had made no mistakes in the raising and training and
+using of three millions of men in warfare of a type of which we have had
+no previous experience, we should indeed have been the supermen which
+the Germans proudly believe and boast themselves to be.  Our mistakes
+have been many and grievous; they will be many and grievous in the days
+that are to come.  But at least we are justified in saying that we are
+not the only blunderers.  Germany started the War with the inestimable
+advantage of complete readiness for the fray; and if she had not made
+mistakes at least equal to those of the Allies, she would long ago have
+been mistress of Europe and well on the way to the dominating position
+in the world of which she dreamed, but which she will never occupy.
+
+CHAPTER ELEVEN.
+
+VICTORY WITH HONOUR.
+
+  We shall not sheathe the sword, which we have not lightly drawn, until
+  Belgium recovers in full measure all and more than all that she has
+  sacrificed, until France is secured from the menace of aggression,
+  until the rights of the smaller nationalities of Europe are placed
+  upon an unassailable foundation, until the military domination of
+  Prussia is fully and finally destroyed.  That is a great task worthy
+  of a great nation.
+
+Such were the magnificent phrases in which Mr Asquith, at the Guildhall
+on November 9, 1914, expressed, as I hope, once and for all, the
+determined resolve of the British people.
+
+We know to-day even more fully than we did before that there can be no
+peace in the world until "the military domination of Prussia" is fully
+and finally destroyed.
+
+I think, however, the British people and their Allies would make one
+change in Mr Asquith's glowing speech.  They would substitute "Germany"
+for "Prussia."  For the blood-guilt of Prussia has infected the entire
+German nation as with a species of moral leprosy.  The German nation as
+a whole, and not merely the Prussian portion of it, has steeped itself
+in the vileness of which Prussia, admittedly, was the first and greatest
+exemplar.
+
+Gone for ever is the theory that we are at war merely with
+"Prussianism."  Our one aim and object to-day must be the utter
+destruction of the military power of the German Empire as a whole, and
+the squaring of civilisation's long account with the Germanic peoples.
+Assuredly until they are brought to see that the courses upon which they
+have willingly embarked are vile and cruel and wrong--and they can be
+taught this only by the stern argument of force--the peace of Europe
+cannot long be preserved.  If we falter now, if we and our Allies are
+content with anything less than overwhelming and decisive victory, it is
+as certain as the rising of to-morrow's sun that Germany will at once
+set herself to prepare for a further war of aggression.  Nothing but the
+most decisive humiliation will convince her that the world has no use
+for men who aim at world-domination.  Nothing less will bring home to
+the minds of her people the clear truth that the megalomaniac dreams of
+their Emperor have been the sole source of the immeasurable disasters
+which this War has inflicted upon them.
+
+It is impossible to emphasise too strongly the undeniable truth that for
+the British Empire this War is and must be decisive.  If, in the face of
+all perils and sacrifices, we persevere to the noble end which Mr
+Asquith has sketched for us, we can surely see rising in the not very
+distant future visions of an Empire more glorious even than that of
+to-day.
+
+In the madness of his dream of world-dominion, the Kaiser fondly
+believed that one of the first results of the War would be the
+destruction of the British Empire; he thought that its component parts
+would fly apart as if by centrifugal force.  Never in this world has a
+rapacious and domineering ruler made a more fatal mistake.  The
+influence of the War upon the constituent elements of the British Empire
+has been centripetal rather than centrifugal; instead of flying off at a
+tangent as the Kaiser hoped, our scattered Dominions have drawn in
+closer and closer still to the tiny island set in the North Sea which,
+to Britons all the world over, is ever and always "home."  War has truly
+forged new links between us and our brothers overseas, and we may rest
+content that nothing has contributed more powerfully to the shattering
+of the Kaiser's dreams than the glorious story of the Anzacs in
+Gallipoli, the heroism of the Canadians at Ypres, and the devotion with
+which the dusky sons of India have flung themselves into the world-fray
+in the cause of the British Raj.  Not disruption but unity has sprung
+from the War.  If we preserve that glorious unity to the end,
+persevering undismayed through the long days that are yet to come of
+peril and darkness, we shall bequeath to our children and our children's
+children a heritage which will grow brighter and fairer with the passing
+of the changing years.
+
+But there must be no faltering in our great resolve, no surrender to
+weariness or pain, no looking back until our task is done.  For us, very
+literally, _now_ is the appointed time.  If we fail now, if we put off
+our harness with our task unfulfilled, if, having set our hand to the
+plough, we become faint and weak, it needs no strong imagination to see
+stretching out before us the downward path which must lead the British
+Empire to disruption and decay.
+
+No matter what the cost, no matter what the sacrifice, we must win this
+War, and win it so decisively that the menace of Teuton aggression and
+arrogance, of the immoral doctrine that brute force is the only right,
+shall be ever removed from civilisation.
+
+Great and glorious are the rewards of success; terrible indeed are the
+penalties which must await on failure.  I implore every single one of my
+readers to do whatever in him lies to help in the great task of arousing
+this nation to the fullest possible realisation of the fact that we must
+either win this War or take our places, humbled and broken, among the
+nations that no longer count in the councils of the world.  For us, at
+any rate, there is no middle course.
+
+We have to remember that this War will never be settled decisively
+unless the Allies are able to invade Germany and to inflict a crushing
+defeat upon the armed force of the enemy.  It may be that Germany, faced
+with certain economic ruin, will sooner or later sue for peace, hoping
+at least to protect her home territory, to keep her internal resources
+untouched to be ready for the economic war which will follow the
+declaration of peace, and to "cut her losses" rather than risk worse
+things.
+
+Such a peace would be a disaster as great as the War itself, and much
+greater than the losses involved in its continuance to a decisive
+ending.  It would leave Germany proud in the consciousness that she had
+faced, not altogether unsuccessfully, an alliance of powerful enemies,
+and she would simply set to work upon fresh designs of conquest and of
+preparation for a renewal of the struggle as soon as things looked
+sufficiently hopeful.  And we may be quite sure that Britain, which has
+had so large a share in the checking of Germany's over-ambitious
+designs, would be the principal enemy to be aimed at.
+
+Never again could we hope to face Germany upon such favourable terms,
+and with such powerful Allies.  We do not fear the issue of a conflict
+with Germany single-handed so long as we are warned in time to make our
+preparations for attack, but we do not want to see the wealth of our
+Empire and of the other nations wasted in the future in that mad
+competition of armaments which Germany has forced on the world.  Rather
+would we see the years that are to come years of peace, when the nations
+shall enjoy a well-earned rest from the burden of militarism which
+German designs have imposed upon civilisation.
+
+Of all the perils by which we are now threatened, perhaps the very
+gravest is the conclusion of a premature peace which, in the very nature
+of things, could be nothing more than a thinly veiled truce to prepare
+for a new and even more titanic conflict.  That is the game which the
+Germans are playing to-day, and its dangers to us were admirably pointed
+out by Lord Rosebery in a recent speech.  He said:
+
+  There is only one thing which I sometimes fear.  It is that when
+  successes begin there may be some weak-minded cry in this country for
+  a premature peace.  A premature peace means a short peace, and a war
+  that will be even worse than this to follow.  Therefore let all of us
+  unite in the resolve that while no exertion shall be wanting on our
+  part to bring the War to a triumphant conclusion and the Prussian
+  bloodthirsty tyrants to their knees, yet, on the other hand, not a
+  finger will be raised to accelerate peace before it is justly due.
+
+To that grave and noble warning perhaps I may add the testimony of an
+officer who is now serving at the front.  He writes:
+
+  At the present moment there are millions of French, Belgian, Russian,
+  and Serbian peasants wandering about homeless, and there are thousands
+  besides who have died as the result of this wandering about, or who
+  have been actually killed by the Germans as though they had been
+  soldiers in uniform.
+
+  Now look at Germany--Germany who will soon be ready for peace!  She
+  has hardly had her territory touched; her people do not know what it
+  means to have war waged in their own country.
+
+  What I say is that this War must not be finished until it has been
+  carried right into the heart of Germany, so that the German people may
+  know and understand what France, Belgium, Serbia, and Russia have gone
+  through during the last fifteen months.
+
+  It is a frightful nightmare to all of us out here that we shall
+  suddenly be told one morning that peace is declared while we are still
+  sitting on this present line of trenches through Belgium and France.
+  No one wants peace more than we do out here, but I--and I know most
+  soldiers are the same--would rather die than see a peace made before
+  we have shown them in Germany what the peasants of the Allies have
+  suffered.
+
+  It's no good being soft-hearted with the Germans.  I don't think there
+  is any danger of the other Allies being carried away by the premature
+  peace talk; it's only England, who does not know what war means, who
+  may be.
+
+Over and over again the Germans have attempted, with barefaced
+effrontery, to buy off our Allies, to attempt to induce them to forsake
+the common cause, to acquiesce, in short, in the betrayal of Britain.
+That to-day is the keystone of the game of chicanery and fraud which
+passes in Berlin for diplomacy.  There can be no doubt that to France,
+to Italy, and to Russia splendid gains are freely open as the price of a
+dishonourable peace; there is to-day hardly any concession which Germany
+would not willingly make to either of the Allies to secure their
+withdrawal from the contest.
+
+The one aim of Germany to-day is to detach Britain's Allies, because
+Germany thinks that with Britain as her sole antagonist she would be
+sure of ultimate victory.  And with her warped code of national honour,
+with her cynical disregard of the plighted word, she simply cannot
+understand why the baits she is ready to offer are rejected on all hands
+with loathing and scorn.  She cannot understand the obligations of
+national honour; she cannot understand that a nation may be too proud to
+stoop to betrayal for the reward of a bribe.  Happily, the bonds which
+unite the Allies hold firm; and if the Germans cannot see and understand
+the meaning of the solemn renewal of the Allies' pledge to Belgium, so
+much the worse for them.  Probably they think it is all a piece of
+bluff, and that we are as ready as they themselves are for peace.
+
+The German gauges every man by his own low standard.  He believes that
+every man has his price; nevertheless, in this belief he exempts the
+English.
+
+I have before me as I write a copy of recent instructions and advice
+issued from the German Intelligence Department to its spies.  This
+document is a long and most illuminating one.  Here are some quotations
+from it:
+
+  The officer who has prepared himself by an exhaustive course of
+  technical study cannot fail to acquit himself in intelligence work,
+  _which is more fruitful of distinction than most of the duties of his
+  profession_.
+
+  It is rarely advisable to try to conceal one's nationality, but at the
+  same time it is often desirable to assume, especially when in Russia
+  or England, the character and accent of a South German, and to allow
+  it to be understood that he is a member of the Roman Catholic faith.
+
+  In England it is well to avoid making any approaches to either a
+  military or naval officer.  _They may be regarded as incorruptible_.
+
+The latter sentence of this secret document shows what Germany thinks of
+our British officers.  It shows also to our Allies what our enemies
+think of us.
+
+The Invisible Hand is ever at work, no doubt.  But even the German
+Intelligence Department, with all its brains and all its cunning, is
+compelled to admit that we Britons are incorruptible.  They have, of
+course, established the canker-worm in the heart of Great Britain, and
+we have with us the horde of so-called "naturalised" Germans, so many of
+whom are impatiently awaiting the downfall of the country to which they
+have with their traitorous oaths sworn allegiance.  But this they have
+also done in the territory of our Allies, and we may be sure that the
+scheme which is working tortuously to split the Allies will be
+persevered in until its futility becomes obvious even to the German
+mind.  It is this plot which explains the peace talk which is beginning
+to issue so cleverly from Berlin.  The design, quite obviously, is
+either to weaken the solidarity of the Entente or to represent Germany
+to the neutral nations as the benevolent victor who is ready with the
+magnanimous offer of the olive-branch as soon as her beaten foes come to
+their senses.
+
+Such talk may deceive Germans; it may even have some effect upon the
+very numerous peace body in America with its ludicrous Ford expedition
+(to whom it is perhaps principally addressed); but it surely can deceive
+no one else.  It does not deceive "the man in the street."  We have
+plenty of evidence that the vast mass of people in the neutral nations
+realise fully the futility of the German aims, and they are not in the
+least degree likely to be tempted into proffering peace proposals which
+would assuredly be instantly rejected by the Allied Powers.
+
+Keen observers among the neutral nations are fully conscious of the fact
+that Britain's determination to win the War is hardening into that stern
+and immutable resolve which in all ages has been the dominant
+characteristic of our people when once their dogged temper was fully
+aroused.  And of the determination of our Allies there is happily not
+the slightest doubt.  They are one and all determined to end once and
+for all the German menace to the peace of the world.
+
+I believe most firmly that we can win this War if we will.  _We have
+alike the power and the will to win_.
+
+The combined resources of the Allies in men and money are, in the long
+run, vastly superior to those of Germany and her miserable vassals--for
+the countries she has dragged into the War with her are, and can be,
+nothing more.  The Central Powers are fighting to-day on four great main
+fronts, and the drain on their resources is appalling.  Germany, in the
+words of a keen American observer, is being "bled white," and to-day she
+is striving to secure some vestiges of success to hearten her people,
+who are beginning to entertain some uneasy doubts as to the reality of
+the "victories" of which they have heard so much.  And her perils are
+rapidly increasing.  Her Turkish Ally has been so badly shaken that we
+may well look forward to the swift progress of that demoralisation which
+seems to have already commenced; if Turkey falls by the way, nothing
+will keep the swelled-headed Bulgarians in the field, and probably
+nothing would keep the Rumanians and Greeks out of it.
+
+We have to remember that the South-Eastern front is the last chance
+Germany has of breaking through the iron ring which is ever being drawn
+tighter and tighter round her throat.  Her dreams of expansion eastwards
+are indeed already shattered, and with the Turkish failure in Armenia
+probably goes the last hope Germany entertained of being able to call
+the fight a draw.  In the language of the New York _Tribune_, "Germany
+is now approaching what will be her last great bid for success.  But it
+will not be made on the battlefield; it will be made in conferences, in
+peace negotiations, and in operations through neutrals."  Against that
+danger it is more than ever necessary for us to be on our guard.
+
+And that danger is undoubtedly increased by the mischievous and
+traitorous chatter of the peace cranks who in our own country are slowly
+recovering their courage, and are beginning to make their noisy voices
+heard.  These are the people who at the moment are the real enemies of
+our country, the real pro-Germans.  They are not very numerous, but they
+are very noisy; they are not very intelligent, but they are very
+persistent; and, like all "martyrs," so-called, they are imbued with the
+firm conviction that they alone are right, and that all the rest of our
+people are wrong.  They are industrious with the industry of the true
+fanatic, and they are striving by every means in their power, fair or
+foul, to swing the wavering and the faint-hearted to their cause.
+
+Already the croaking voice of the peace crank has been heard even in the
+House of Lords itself, and it might have been heard still more loudly if
+the public, with a just perception of the mischief these pestilent
+people are doing, had not taken more than once rough-and-ready measures
+to put a stop to their misguided energies.
+
+I am no advocate of mob law, but if the peace advocates persist in
+turning the principle of free speech into a licence for a traitorous
+propaganda I confess I cannot sympathise deeply with their shrieks for
+sympathy when an indignant public turns upon them in the only way open
+to it, and refuses to allow their voices to be heard.
+
+That the heart of the people is sound upon this question of fighting the
+War to the only conclusion compatible with our national honour and
+safety I am to-day firmly convinced.
+
+Yet there is a very real risk that the cry of "Stop the War!" may make
+too many converts among the unthinking sections who, like all of us, are
+weary of the War and long to see peace restored.  None of us desires to
+see the War prolonged, with all its terrible cost in blood and treasure;
+but, on the other hand, no Englishman worthy the name can fail to share
+the view expressed by Lord Rosebery.  It is the business of all loyal
+Britons to see that the poisonous propaganda which finds its best
+representation in such egregious bodies as the "Union of Democratic
+Control" shall be decisively countered.  It is the business of the
+nation to concentrate all its energies to-day upon the winning of a
+clear and unmistakable victory which shall ensure the peace of Europe
+for a century to come.
+
+It is a very striking characteristic of Germany that the better things
+are going the more loudly she talks of the great things she is going to
+do in the immediate future.  Every trifling success she wins produces an
+outburst of extravagant boasting wholly disproportionate to the
+achievement.  In the early days of the War, what the Germans call, with
+their usual lack of good taste, the "big mouth" (_grosse Schnautze_) was
+very much in evidence.  It has cooled down very considerably of late,
+and its place is being taken by a very much more chastened frame of
+mind.
+
+The olive-branch is much in evidence, and the mailed fist is somewhat at
+a discount.  "Frightfulness" is, in the main, left to the sabre-rattling
+Count Reventlow, the puff-ball Captain Persius, and to that portion of
+the German Press which takes its leading articles direct from the
+Government lie-factory in Berlin.  Ananias has his hand heavily over
+Germany at the present moment.  Otherwise the tone is one of a benignant
+willingness to admit that Germany and all the other countries have been
+very much to blame, and that it is time this terrible War was ended.
+This new species of modesty by compulsion is all a part of the German
+dodge to try to make a favourable peace which would leave Germany
+weakened indeed--it is realised that that can hardly be avoided--but by
+no means whipped.  It is our business to stick to our task until the
+whipping is obvious not only to the whole world, but to the German
+people as well.
+
+The times are full of perils, yet they are not without hope.  Already we
+see the rifts in the dark clouds which have hung over us for so long.
+And if we turn a deaf ear to those who counsel the way of ignominious
+ease, if we decide to persevere with all our heart and all our strength
+along the path of noble purpose upon which we have embarked, we shall
+reach in good time to the long-desired haven of victory and peace and
+prosperity.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+I defined in this hall exactly a year ago the objects without the
+attainment of which the Allies will not lay down their arms.  They
+remain to-day as they were then.  We pursue them one and all with
+undiminished faith; we believe that we have advanced a long way to their
+achievement.  Be the journey long or short we shall not falter till we
+have secured for the smaller states of Europe their charter of
+Independence, and for Europe itself and for the world at large its final
+emancipation from the reign of force.--_Mr Asquith, at The Guildhall,
+November 9, 1915_.
+
+CHAPTER TWELVE.
+
+"NEVER AGAIN."
+
+It would be nothing less than a crime against civilisation if, after the
+War has come to a close, Germany is left with the power again to make
+herself a menace to the peace of our modern civilised world.
+
+We need have no sentimental considerations on this point.  We want none.
+Germany has shown conclusively that she is not to be bound by any
+considerations of honour, and that she has deliberately aimed at what
+the world will never tolerate--world-dominion in the hands of a single
+Power.  We and our Allies have determined that she shall not be allowed
+to realise her ambitions in this direction; it is our duty to see that
+for the future, in the interests of humanity as a whole, she is robbed
+of the power of making herself a nuisance and a danger to her
+neighbours, who wish only to live in peace.
+
+If peace for the moment were the only object of the Allies, their wishes
+could be gratified on very easy terms.
+
+There is no doubt whatever that Germany would be glad to bring the War
+to a close before she is more seriously weakened, if not utterly ruined;
+it is our business and the business of our Allies to see that no
+premature peace is allowed to rob them of the fruits of their great
+sacrifices.  For, be it remembered, their real object is not so much
+victory now, except inasmuch as victory will enable them to gain
+security in the future.  We do not want a world kept perpetually on
+tenterhooks by Germany's exhibitions of the "mailed fist"; and unless I
+misread entirely the signs of the times, I do not think we are likely to
+have it.  Germany will have to be dealt with after the War, and no
+feelings of pity or consideration for a defeated enemy can have any
+influence on the settlement.
+
+For years past Germany has deliberately elected to make economic war in
+times of peace.  Of this we have no reason to complain; a country's
+fiscal arrangements are a matter for itself.  But out of her economic
+war Germany grew rich and strong enough to wage military war, and she
+will do so again unless we and our Allies take steps to stop her.  Now
+in this matter old shibboleths have got to go by the board, and there is
+every indication that, not as a matter of politics, but as a mere matter
+of self-preservation, both Britain and the Allies are preparing to fight
+Germany in the future with the weapon which in the past has proved so
+successful against themselves.
+
+There are very few things indeed produced by Germany which Britain or
+her Allies cannot produce for themselves, and I have no hesitation in
+saying that for the future our fiscal watchword ought to be, "The Allies
+first and the rest nowhere."  I do not want to see this or that party
+snatch a party advantage out of our old quarrels on the subject of Free
+Trade.
+
+I have every hope that as a result of the War many of our old suicidal
+party divisions and petty bickerings will disappear, never to return;
+and for this reason I hope--perhaps it is hoping against hope--that when
+the War is over we shall consider our future tariff system not as
+Liberals or Conservatives, but as Imperialists pure and simple.
+
+It is true, speaking broadly, that the Liberal Party as a whole is so
+deeply pledged to Free Trade that any reversal of its policy on this
+subject must be a matter of grave difficulty.  But the question is no
+longer Free Trade or Tariff Reform; the question to-day is, or at least
+in the near future will be, the maintenance of Britain's commercial
+prosperity against German attacks which are sure to be renewed the
+instant peace is declared.
+
+There are those who think--the wish is father to the thought--that
+Germans will be so unpopular after the War that there will be no risk of
+their doing business in any British territory, and that many of the
+neutrals even will refuse to have dealings with them.  I think it is
+undoubtedly true that in many cases and in many countries Germans will
+find that they are not received in the future as they have been in the
+past.  But the Fownes case shows us very clearly that there are
+Englishmen who are not averse to trading with Germany even in time of
+War when such trading is expressly forbidden.  What reason have we,
+then, to think that after peace is declared there will not be found
+hundreds of firms quite ready to trade with Germans if by so doing they
+can make a profit?  And if this is true of England, can we blame the
+neutral nations and our Allies if they are no more scrupulous?
+
+Our policy must be to make such trading impossible because
+unprofitable--firstly, to encourage our own business men throughout the
+Empire and the business men belonging to the nations that are allied
+with us, and, secondly, to prevent Germany gaining in the commercial
+world a position which will enable her again to grow so rich and so
+strong that she will be enabled in her own time again to menace our
+security.
+
+There is only one way to secure that end, and that is by a preferential
+tariff which shall operate in all the Allied countries in favour of
+Allied goods.  At whatever cost in the sacrifice of long-held political
+convictions, some such measure is imperative if we are not to be faced
+with the prospect of another and more terrible war just as soon as
+Germany feels herself strong enough to wage it.
+
+Now it is very significant and very important that at least two
+Ministers whose Free Trade proclivities cannot be suspected have warned
+the country that in the future we shall see great alterations in our
+fiscal policy.  Mr Runciman and Mr Montagu have given expression to
+very similar views, and perhaps I may quote a few words from the speech
+which the latter made at Cambridge, when he said there were two topics
+of enormous importance that every man, Liberal or Conservative, would
+have to keep an open mind upon under the new conditions.
+
+  The first (he proceeded) is the fiscal system.  It cannot have escaped
+  notice that in the House of Commons last year Liberal Free Traders and
+  Conservative Tariff Reformers, leaders of both parties, expressed
+  their opinions that the old economic condition of the relationship
+  between the different parts of the globe would be altered after the
+  War, and without saying to-day what the answer will be to those
+  problems I will say that it is not a part of Liberalism not to
+  recognise altered conditions and circumstances, and to revise or
+  perhaps strengthen ourselves in respect to the new conditions which
+  may arise.  We in the past conducted trade as a peaceful pursuit, and
+  treated all nations as nearly as we could equally.  But look at the
+  history of this War and see the use Germany made of her trade, and
+  just ask yourselves whether we can ever afford or dare to let that
+  happen again.
+
+Now, when he made that speech Mr Montagu was speaking to an assemblage
+of Liberals, and it is not without significance that his remarks were
+received with loud cheers.  There is, indeed, no doubt whatever that
+Liberals and Conservatives are rapidly drawing nearer together on this
+great question, and the outlook for a solution along truly Imperial
+lines is brighter than it has been for many years past.  So great are
+the changes which have been produced by Germany's mad ambition and
+greed!
+
+Even Manchester, the home of Free Trade orthodoxy, has revolted against
+the idea that there shall be free trade with Germany after the War.
+
+The Chamber of Commerce of that city has by an overwhelming majority
+declared itself opposed to anything of the kind.  In London a great
+meeting of business men at the Guildhall, presided over by the Lord
+Mayor, has called emphatically for a policy which shall smash for ever
+the German commercial-military system, shall formulate action for the
+defence and improvement of trade after the War, and shall improve our
+commercial relations with the Overseas Dominions and the Allies.  A
+strong subcommittee of the Board of Trade has reported emphatically in
+favour of preference for our Allies and in favour of tariff protection
+for all industries which are of national necessity.  And the committee
+adds, very significantly, "In view of the threatened dumping of stocks
+which may be accumulated in enemy countries, the Government should take
+such steps as would prevent the position of industries likely to be
+affected being endangered after the War or during the period required
+for a wider consideration of the whole question."
+
+This can be done, in the committee's opinion, by import duties which,
+directed against German and enemy products, would go far to shut them
+out of the British Empire.  The committee even goes so far as to
+recommend that certain goods coming from enemy countries shall be
+absolutely refused admission.
+
+We have shown ourselves in the past very far behind the Overseas
+Dominions in our willingness to advance the cause of British trade for
+British traders.  We must do so no longer.  The enormous contributions
+the Dominions have made to the Empire's cause imperatively demand that
+in the future their devotion shall be recognised, and one of the
+subjects upon which they feel most keenly is that we do not at present
+do enough to encourage their young but rapidly growing industries.
+
+If we adopt the policy of "Empire goods for the Empire," we shall draw
+still closer the bonds which unite old England to her younger sons.  And
+surely, putting our own self-interest aside, our gallant Allies have
+some reason to look to Britain for help in fighting the German octopus.
+They as well as we are vitally interested in making peace secure after
+this terrible struggle; and just as the War has been in the main brought
+about by Germany's economic expansion being turned to evil purposes, so
+peace will be secured only by her being prevented from waging economic
+war in the future.  And the best way to secure that end is to establish
+in the British Empire and all the Allied nations a tariff wall that
+shall amount to a virtual boycott of German products of every kind
+whatever.  There will be no reluctance on the part of our Allies to join
+us in such a policy; Russia, indeed, has already announced that her
+trade is closed to Germany for all time.
+
+There is another reason why such a boycott should appeal specially to
+England.  During this War we have made advances amounting to many
+hundreds of millions to the Allies who are fighting with us in the cause
+of civilisation.  That money will sooner or later be repaid, and on
+every account it will be best repaid in the way of trade.  The more
+closely we can, after the War, confine our foreign trade to our Allies,
+the more easily and the more quickly will they be able to reduce their
+indebtedness to us.  A lasting commercial compact between the Allied
+Powers will not only be a powerful financial help to all of them, but it
+will be perhaps the most powerful instrument that could be devised for
+preserving the peace of the world.
+
+We have seen during the past few years what the Germans meant and have
+done by the methods of "peaceful penetration."  Unless some remedy is
+devised those methods will be put into operation again directly after
+the War.  Antwerp is a standing case in point.  Belgians and French
+alike denounced the insidious plot to make of Antwerp a purely German
+port; but although ninety per cent, of the trade was handled and owned
+by Germans, and brought no profit to Belgium, the scandal--for it was
+nothing less--was allowed to continue.  In England, especially in
+London, and in our Dominions we have seen the same evil.  The case of
+the Merton firm, some of whose associates had secured practically the
+monopoly of the world's trade in base metals, gives us an object-lesson
+which I trust we shall not forget.  London traders can tell strange
+stories of "peaceful penetration" of British industries.  They know how
+countless German clerks came over to work at low wages "just to learn
+the language."  They found out too late that these clerks all received a
+subsidy from the German Government, that they were really German
+commercial spies in the pay of rival firms, and that any employer who
+admitted these aliens into his establishment was sure soon to note a
+falling-off in orders, due to the alien clerks having access to
+confidential correspondence and advising their paymasters in Germany
+accordingly.  And those self-same clerks received from Germany a premium
+if they married English girls!  Now no tariff will furnish absolute
+protection against such methods as this; the British trader will have
+himself to thank if he is caught again by the same device.  But we have
+to remember that the Hun is amazingly ingenious in every description of
+underhand work, and that fresh plans will be devised if the old ones
+fail.  We must take measures accordingly.  And one of those measures
+must be a stringent revision of the law relating to naturalisation.  We
+want no more Germans naturalised in this country for many a long year to
+come.
+
+We want no more Germans over here acting as spies in either the military
+or the commercial field.  We will tolerate none.  Further, I hope that
+after the War is over we shall see an effective passport system
+introduced which shall apply to all foreigners, and that before any
+German or Austrian is allowed even to reside in the country he will be
+compelled to obtain some kind of guarantee of good behaviour from some
+responsible English firm.  Only by some such means can we make it
+difficult or impossible for the worst class of our enemies to swarm over
+here directly peace is signed.
+
+Coupled with efficient passport restrictions, I hope to see an effective
+check put upon the admission of undesirable aliens of any and every
+nation.  We do not want a lot of foreign wastrels whose countries are
+only too glad to be rid of them swarming into England to flood the
+already overcrowded labour market and, willing to live in hopeless
+penury, bringing down the price of wages here to the detriment of our
+own people.  Something has been done of late years to reduce this
+scandal; I hope still more will be done in the future.
+
+Then we have the question of German-controlled firms operating under
+English names and with English registration.  This system must
+absolutely stop.  Whether it will be possible for German firms openly to
+trade here after the War I do not know, but at any rate we must have no
+more Teutons posing as British, and Huns acquiring control of British
+industries.  The name "German" shall be an everlasting stigma.  The
+powers which the Government now possess to control any firm shown to be
+of enemy nationality should be continued, and there ought to be devised
+some means of putting an end to the scandals which for years past have
+given the Germans unrivalled opportunities for worming their way into
+the English commercial world.
+
+I have no doubt whatever that many reputable British firms will in the
+future hesitate very considerably before they do any business with
+Germany.  But we have to recognise that there are others who will be
+less scrupulous, and who will reck nothing of the danger to the country
+if they see the chance of turning a more or less honest penny.  Those
+are the people against whom, in the interests of our Empire, we have to
+be on our guard.
+
+We have ample evidence that the awakening of the British commercial
+community to the dangers which will threaten it immediately after peace
+is declared has aroused the utmost consternation and resentment in
+Germany.  That is at once its best justification and its strongest
+recommendation.  The Germans have openly boasted, both before and since
+war broke out, that British firms could not do business without certain
+goods from Germany.  The fact that we have done so for the past eighteen
+months is sufficient answer, and it is enough to show that we can do so
+in the future.
+
+It is true, of course, that we had, weakly enough, allowed ourselves to
+become dependent upon Germany for scores of German-made articles.  Such
+vital necessities as chemicals of various kinds and the aniline dyes are
+good instances.  Even now we are suffering from the lack of some of
+them.  But there is no mistaking the fact that we are very rapidly
+finding substitutes for what we formerly imported from Germany.  The
+making of British dyes, for example, is progressing by leaps and bounds;
+and there is no doubt that if our traders are given half the
+encouragement that is given to German traders by the German Government,
+they will very soon show that they have nothing to learn from their
+German rivals.  Every day we get new evidence that British firms are
+more and more completely adapting themselves to the altered conditions,
+and laying down extensive plant for the manufacture of just those
+articles we used to purchase dearly from our Teutonic competitors.  That
+policy must be ours for all time.
+
+What Germans have done we can do.  The German is great at imitating and
+improving, but he has little originality; he is like the Japanese, quick
+to see a good thing and adapt it, but not so quick to invent.  We have
+to see for the future that we are as quick as he is to adapt and a great
+deal quicker to invent, and unless we do so we shall in a very few
+years' time see arise in a new form many of the troubles which, if we
+handle the commercial position aright, ought never again to disturb us.
+
+"Never again" must be our watchword in dealing with the accursed German
+competition.  Our people must be educated to a permanent boycott of
+German goods; if they will not learn, they must be compelled.  Our
+manufacturers must be protected against the policy of dumping bounty-fed
+goods throughout our Empire at rates with which it is impossible for
+them to compete because the German Government makes it possible for the
+German trader to sell even below cost price with the object of ousting
+his British rival.  Socially and commercially we must be protected
+against the flood of aliens who have already done untold harm to British
+labour.  All this we have done for eighteen months; we must do it in
+perpetuity for the future.
+
+But when all is said and done we cannot make our position in the world
+secure unless our trading classes are prepared to revise very
+considerably many of the methods they have adopted for years past.  The
+time when British goods sold merely because they were British, and
+therefore the best on the market, has gone for ever.  To-day commercial
+competition is keen beyond anything of which our forefathers had
+knowledge, and our methods unfortunately have not kept pace with the
+changing circumstances.
+
+There has been too much of the old happy-go-lucky style about us; we
+have been too much inclined to rest upon our reputation, and to think
+that because all was well fifty or a hundred years ago, all must be well
+to-day.
+
+The sooner that idea disappears from the minds of our business men the
+better it will be for them and for the Empire.  Never was the King's
+message, "Wake up, England," more urgently necessary than it is to-day.
+Proper measures taken by our Government will make it easier for us to
+beat the Germans in the future in the field of commerce.  But no
+measures which Governments can take will wholly replace business ability
+and energy.  Just as, given proper weapons, our soldiers can beat the
+Germans in the field of war, so we can beat the Germans in the field of
+commerce if our commercial soldiers are given weapons adequate to the
+task they have in hand.  But neither the weapons of war nor the weapons
+of commerce will avail us _unless they are used by men with clear heads,
+strong hearts, and unbounded energy and determination_.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+As this volume goes to press the Titanic struggle for Verdun--the battle
+which may well decide the War--rages with undiminished fury.  What the
+outcome may be none can say, but, at least, the omens are good.  After
+over a fortnight of furious fighting, after the expenditure of many
+lives and enormous quantities of ammunition, the Huns have utterly
+failed to pierce the French defence.  The troops of France are fighting
+like heroes: her generals are serene and confident.  Germany has staked
+her all on this gigantic thrust.  Failure would spell national
+depression on an unparalleled scale, and add to the German Government's
+growing difficulties.  And if Verdun falls, will the victory be worth
+the price?  We know that almost any position can be taken if losses are
+disregarded.  But whether Verdun will ever be worth to the Germans the
+price they will have to pay for its capture is, to say the least of it,
+exceedingly doubtful.  But the Germans are deeply committed to the
+venture, and it may be that they will consider no price too high to
+pay--for they hold "cannon-fodder" cheap--in order to save what remains
+of their badly shattered national, military, and dynastic prestige.
+
+The End.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Way to Win, by William Le Queux
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41129 ***