is to bring into
operation a system which, while partaking of a democratic nature,
and so not being repugnant to the national type (as developed by
geography, circumstance and history) may yet bring into play the
advantages of military training and national organisation. If you
can persuade the stolid Englishman to adopt a sort of
semi-voluntary military system, which is voluntary or appears so
to him, yet puts him under discipline, well then you have an
ideal system for England to win this war by. Of course, there is
an alternative scheme, namely, for some man of outstanding
personality to come along and say, "Look here, I am master, and
by my force of character I will compel you to bow to a system
which I know to be good for you and which will in the end benefit
you." Lloyd George might be even such a man--a Caesar, a
Charlemagne, a Cromwell, or a Napoleon.

But I confess that this amazing English race is hard to bend,
even when a man of outstanding personality arises. Did not Oliver
himself--a superman if ever there was one--fail in his efforts to
make better those whom he ruled? Still, as Goethe says,
"Personality makes the man," and perhaps even in England a great
man might force our stubborn nation to his will. But I confess I
doubt it. Besides, I fear the system would break down as soon as
the immediate need for it had vanished. We must have regard to
the evolution of our type of race-species when trying to frame
measures for its advance to victory over another type of
race-species, for the simple reason that, if we do not, the
system we are trying to set up will remain in the air, and never
come to anything until the people have become sufficiently
educated in our way of thinking to accept such a scheme. It seems
to me that you could never make a British Army on a German model,
or a German Army on a British model, because of the difference
between the types of the two nations--the only exception being
where you have a superman with a wonderful mind and personality
to plan the pattern and enforce its adoption.

Our problem in England is to organise the very individualistic
British race without letting them imagine that they are being
organised. This sounds like the problem about the irresistible
force up against the insurmountab