s can only destroy; they
possess no permanent creative spirit, and the partition of Poland
has remained a peculiar and increasing curse to its promoters in
Prussia....

There is not in Christian history, though it abounds in coincidence
or design, a more striking example of sin suitably rewarded than
the menace which is presented to the Hohenzollerns to-day by the
Polish race. Not even their hereditary disease, which has reached
its climax in the present generation has proved so sure a
chastisement to the lineage of Frederick as have proved the
descendants of those whose country he destroyed. An economic
accident has scattered them throughout the dominions of the
Prussian dynasty; they are a source everywhere of increasing danger
and ill-will. They grow largely in representative power. They
compel the government to abominable barbarities which are already
arousing the mind of Europe. They will in the near future prove the
ruin of that family to which was originally due the partition of
Poland.

To Mr. Belloc, then, holding this view of Prussia, it was obvious that
the conflict of wills between Prussia and the other nations would
inevitably grow so intense as some day to result in war.

Briefly to recapitulate, we may say that Mr. Belloc, in his weekly
commentary in _Land and Water_, has undertaken and carried on since the
beginning of the war a task which the vast majority of the English
public is quite unable to undertake for itself. He was qualified to
undertake that task, and has been enabled to carry it on by the fact
that he has combined with a deep study of military history an exact
knowledge of military science; by the knowledge he has gained from
practical experience of army service; by the wide acquaintance he has
made with the vast stretches of country in the indulgence of his tastes
in travel and topography; by the long and thorough training he has
passed through in the dispassionate examination of evidence; and,
lastly, by the fact that he had long envisaged the possibility of this
war.

With this brief summary we may usefully contrast Mr. Belloc's own
summary of his work already quoted in the early part of this chapter. In
this he says: "My work ... is no more than an attempt to give week by
week, at what I am proud to say is a very great expense of time and
energy, an explanation of what is taking place. There are man