ankind was on the point of discovering the
secret of immortality. The utter unpreparedness of the Allies was the
dominant note of the new situation, and its manifestations were
countless and disastrous. There was no adequate British expeditionary
army to send on foreign service, and there existed no machinery by
which such a force could quickly be got together and trained.
Voluntary enlistment was a slowly moving mechanism, and even if it
could be made to work more rapidly, there was no way of employing the
new soldiers, for whom there were neither barracks nor uniforms nor
rifles in sufficiency. And if all these requirements could have been
improvised, there were no generals accustomed to handle armies of
millions. And even if all those wants had been supplied to hand there
was no Government enterprising enough to put them to the best
advantage of the nation. Moreover, colonial expeditions were the most
extensive military operations which the country had carried on within
the memory of the present generation, and it was beyond the power of
the authorities not only to organize the imperial defences on an
adequate scale but even to realize the necessity of attempting the
feat. In a word, the prospect could hardly have been more dismal.

In France it was a degree less cheerless, but still decidedly bleak.
Mobilization there went forward, it is claimed, more smoothly than had
been anticipated, but not rapidly enough to enable adequate forces to
be dispatched in time against the German military flood. The
organization of the railway system was most inefficient. And had it
not been for heroic Belgium, who, confronted with the alternatives of
ruin with honour and safety with ignominy, unhesitatingly chose the
better part, the inrush of the Teutons would, it is asserted by
military experts, have swept away every obstacle that lay between them
and the French capital, which was their first objective. Belgium's
magnificent resistance thus saved Paris, gave breathing space to the
French, and enabled the Allies to swing their sword before smiting.

Russia, too, did better than had been augured of her, but not nearly
as well as if her resources had been organized by competent experts,
alive to the dangers that threatened the empire. On the eve of the war
a process of fermentation among the working men of her two capitals
was coming to a head, and a revolt, if not a revolution, was being
industriously organized. The movement had cer