ey must show the Germans that they can't whip Great Britain.
If England wins decisively the English hope that somehow the
military party will be overthrown in Germany and that the Germans,
under peaceful leadership, will go about their
business--industrial, political, educational, etc.--and quit
dreaming of and planning for universal empire and quit maintaining
a great war-machine, which at some time, for some reason, must
attack somebody to justify its existence. This makes it difficult
for the English to make overtures to or to receive overtures from
this military war-party which now _is_ Germany. But, if it he
possible so completely to whip the war party that it will somehow
be thrown out of power at home--that's the only way they now see
out of it. To patch up a peace, leaving the German war party in
power, they think, would be only to invite another war.

If you can get over this point, you can bring the English around in
ten minutes. But they are not going to take any chances on it. Read
English history and English literature about the Spanish Armada or
about Napoleon. They are acting those same scenes over again,
having the same emotions, the same purpose: nobody must invade or
threaten England. "If they do, we'll spend the last man and the
last shilling. We value," they say truly, "the good-will and the
friendship of the United States more than we value anything except
our own freedom, but we'll risk even that rather than admit copper
to Germany, because every pound of copper prolongs the war."

There you are. I've blinked myself blind and talked myself hoarse
to men in authority--from Grey down--to see a way out--without
keeping this intolerable slaughter up to the end. But they stand
just where I tell you.

And the horror of it no man knows. The news is suppressed. Even
those who see it and know it do not realize it. Four of the crack
regiments of this kingdom--regiments that contained the flower of
the land and to which it was a distinction to belong--have been
practically annihilated, one or two of them annihilated twice. Yet
their ranks are filled up and you never hear a murmur. Presently
it'll be true that hardly a title or an estate in England will go
to its natural heir--the heir has been killed. Yet, not a murmur;
for Englan