win. More and more it will have the quality of surprise, of
pitiless revelation. Instead of the seesaw, the bickering interchange of
battles of the old time, will come swiftly and amazingly blow, and blow,
and blow, no pause, no time for recovery, disasters cumulative and
irreparable.

The fight will never be in practice between equal sides, never be that
theoretical deadlock we have sketched, but a fight between the more
efficient and the less efficient, between the more inventive and the
more traditional. While the victors, disciplined and grimly intent, full
of the sombre yet glorious delight of a grave thing well done, will,
without shouting or confusion, be fighting like one great national body,
the losers will be taking that pitiless exposure of helplessness in such
a manner as their natural culture and character may determine. War for
the losing side will be an unspeakable pitiable business. There will be
first of all the coming of the war, the wave of excitement, the
belligerent shouting of the unemployed inefficients, the flag-waving,
the secret doubts, the eagerness for hopeful news, the impatience of the
warning voice. I seem to see, almost as if he were symbolic, the grey
old general--the general who learnt his art of war away in the vanished
nineteenth century, the altogether too elderly general with his
epaulettes and decorations, his uniform that has still its historical
value, his spurs and his sword--riding along on his obsolete horse, by
the side of his doomed column. Above all things he is a gentleman. And
the column looks at him lovingly with its countless boys' faces, and the
boys' eyes are infinitely trustful, for he has won battles in the old
time. They will believe in him to the end. They have been brought up in
their schools to believe in him and his class, their mothers have
mingled respect for the gentlefolk with the simple doctrines of their
faith, their first lesson on entering the army was the salute. The
"smart" helmets His Majesty, or some such unqualified person, chose for
them, lie hotly on their young brows, and over their shoulders slope
their obsolete, carelessly-sighted guns. Tramp, tramp, they march, doing
what they have been told to do, incapable of doing anything they have
not been told to do, trustful and pitiful, marching to wounds and
disease, hunger, hardship, and death. They know nothing of what they are
going to meet, nothing of what they will have to do; Religion and the