then I do
not see that the hope of an ultimate world peace vanishes. But it will
be a Roman world peace, made in Germany, and there will have to be
several more great wars before it is established. Germany is too
homogeneous yet to have begun the lesson of compromise and the
renunciation of the dream of national conquest. The Germans are a
national, not an imperial people. France has learnt that through
suffering, and Britain and Russia because for two centuries they have
been imperial and not national systems. The German conception of world
peace is as yet a conception of German ascendancy. The Allied conception
becomes perforce one of mutual toleration.

But I will not press this inquiry farther now. It is, as I said at the
beginning, a preliminary exploration of one of the great questions with
which I propose to play in these articles. The possibility I have
sketched is the one that most commends itself to me as probable. After a
more detailed examination of the big operating forces at present working
in the world, we may be in a position to revise these suggestions with a
greater confidence and draw our net of probabilities a little tighter.

II. THE END OF THE WAR[1]

The prophet who emerges with the most honour from this war is Bloch. It
must be fifteen or sixteen years ago since this gifted Pole made his
forecast of the future. Perhaps it is more, for the French translation
of his book was certainly in existence before the Boer War. His case was
that war between antagonists of fairly equal equipment must end in a
deadlock because of the continually increasing defensive efficiency of
entrenched infantry. This would give the defensive an advantage over the
most brilliant strategy and over considerably superior numbers that
would completely discourage all aggression. He concluded that war was
played out.

[Footnote 1: This chapter was originally a newspaper article. It was
written in December, 1915, and published about the middle of January.
Some of it has passed from the quality of anticipation to achievement,
but I do not see that it needs any material revision on that account.]

His book was very carefully studied in Germany. As a humble disciple of
Bloch I should have realised this, but I did not, and that failure led
me into some unfortunate prophesying at the outbreak of the war. I
judged Germany by the Kaiser, and by the Kaiser-worship which I saw in
Berlin. I thought that he was a theatrical pe