t from Belgium and then
from France, their gentle remonstrances with the enemy, their
carefully worded arguments, their generous understatement of their
country's case, and their suppression of any emotion among their own
folk akin to hatred or passion. In an insular people for whom peace
was an ideal, neighbourliness a sacred duty, and the psychology of
foreign nations a sealed book, this way of reading the bearings of the
new situation and adjusting them to the nation's requirements was
natural and fateful.

To the few private individuals who had the advantage of experience and
were gifted with political vision the crisis presented itself under a
different aspect. Some of them had foreseen and foretold the war,
basing their forecast on the obvious policy of the German Government
and on the overt strivings of the German nation. They had depicted
that nation as intellectual and enterprising, abundantly equipped with
all the requisites for an exhausting contest, fired with enthusiasm
for a single idea--the subjugation of the world--and devoid of ethical
scruple. And in the clarion's blast which suddenly resounded on the
pacific air they recognized the trump of doom for Teuton Kultur or
European civilization, and proclaimed the utter inadequacy of ordinary
methods to put down this titanic rebellion against the human race.
That has been the gist of every opinion and suggestion on the subject
put forward by the writer of these lines since the outbreak of the
war.

But even without these repeated warnings it should have been clear
that a carefully calculating people like the Germans, in whom the gift
of organizing is inborn and solicitude for detail is a passion, would
not embark on a preventive war without having first established a just
proportion between their own equipment for the struggle and the
magnitude of the issues dependent on its outcome. It was, further,
reasonable to assume that this was no mere onset of army against army
and navy against navy according to the old rules of the game, but a
mobilization by the two military empires of all their resources--military,
naval, financial, economic, industrial, scientific and journalistic--to
be utilized to the fullest for the destruction of the Entente group.
It was also easy to discern that, whichever side was worsted, the
Europe which had witnessed the beginning of the conflict would be
transfigured at its close, and that Germany would, therefore, not
allow her fre