, which are much vaster than
those of the enemy. To this way of looking at the situation the writer
of these lines opposed another. "There is," he wrote, "a small section
of the nation, men conversant with the aims, modes of thought, and
military, financial, and economic resources of the enemy, whose gloomy
forecasts in the past have been unhappily fulfilled in the present,
and who would gladly see more conclusive evidence than has yet been
offered that everything which can be done at a given moment to turn
the scale more decisively in our favour is being expeditiously
undertaken by the responsible authorities.

[78] August 23, 1914.

[79] November 6, 1914.

"They are afraid that the gravity of the issues for which we are
fighting, the telling initial advantages secured by the wily enemy,
the formidable nature of the difficulties in the way of decisive
victory, and the tremendous sacrifices which we shall all be called
upon to make before we come in sight of the goal, have not yet
filtered down into the consciousness of any considerable section of
the people." Many months later[80] Mr. Lloyd George re-echoed that
judgment when dealing with the Welsh miners' strike.

[80] July 1915.

But optimism continued to prevail among the allied peoples, who
through the Press proclaimed their conviction that ultimate and
complete success was a foregone conclusion. At the same time, however,
an eager desire to hasten this consummation found vent among a
considerable section of politicians, more particularly in France. And
one of the means by which they hoped to attain their goal was by
inviting Japan to co-operate with the Allies in Europe. As
"invitation" was the term employed, the peculiar manner in which the
idea was conceived hardly needs definition. To the Japanese themselves
the inference was patent and distasteful. Theretofore it had been a
dogma that France, Britain and Russia, being quite capable of crushing
Germany and Austria, neither attempted nor wished to draw any neutral
or Asiatic nation into the sanguinary maelstrom of war. And even now
it was held to be undignified to swerve from that doctrine. Help
therefore, it was contended, was not indispensable to victory, it was
merely desirable from the humanitarian standpoint of putting an early
end to the campaign and sparing the lives of millions.

French statesmen of the calibre of MM. Pichon and Clemenceau pushed
into the foreground of international p