peace
party had ever seemed likely to oust them. The real experts even
foresaw the chief ways in which the war would be fought. Lord Fisher
foresaw the danger of sea-going submarines long before submarines were
used for anything but the defence of harbours. More than this, ten
years before the war he named all the four senior men who led the first
British army into Flanders. In Lord Esher's diary for the 17th of
January, 1904, ten years before the war, is the following note about
Fisher's opinion on the best British generals: "French, because he
never failed in South Africa, and because he has the splendid gift of
choosing the right man (he means Douglas Haig). Then Smith-Dorrien and
Plumer." In the same way Joffre and Foch were known to be the great
commanders of the French. Again in the same way (that is, by the
foreknowledge of the real experts) Lord Jellicoe, though a junior
rear-admiral at the time, was pointed out at the Quebec Tercentenary
(1908) as the man who would command the Grand Fleet; while Sir David
Beatty and Sir Charles Madden were also known as "rising stars."

The following years were fuller than ever of the coming war. In 1910
the Kaiser went to Vienna and let the world know that he was ready to
stand by Austria in "shining armour." Austria, Bulgaria, Turkey, and
Greece were all to be used for the grand German railway from Berlin to
Bagdad that was to cut Russia off from the rest of Europe, get all the
trade of the Near East into German hands, and, by pushing down to the
Persian Gulf, threaten the British oversea line between England and
Asia.

During the next three years the Italian conquest of Tripoli (next door
to Egypt) and the two wars in the Balkans hurt Germany's friends, the
Turks and Bulgarians, a great deal, and thus threatened the German
Berlin-to-Bagdad "line of penetration" through the Near East and into
the Asiatic sea flank of the hated British. With 1914 came the
completion of the enlarged Kiel Canal (exactly as foretold by Fisher
years before); and this, together with the state of the world for and
against the Germans, made the war an absolute certainty at once. The
murder of the heir to the Austrian throne, Franz Ferdinand, was only an
excuse to goad the gallant Serbians into war. Any other would have
done as well if it had only served the German turn.

HYMN BEFORE ACTION

The earth is full of anger,
The seas are dark with wrath,
The Nations in their ha