informed that her statement
had been verified, her mother lay ill--the malady was mentioned--and
she was permitted to go. The Germans have eyes and ears in all the
countries of their adversaries.

One can readily imagine the painful kind of questions that will arise
in the mind of an intelligent ally who realizes for the first time how
great are the inventive and organizing talents of the Teuton, how
unswerving his resolve, how tenacious he is of purpose, and how
unconscious most of us still are of the need of bestirring ourselves
to compete with him on terms of equality. The German's striving is
one, but all-embracing. His means are countless, for they are
restricted by no limitations. In his search for tools and agents he
enters into human nature, but not in its entire compass; only into the
baser parts, so that his estimate is often erroneous and his
expectations are unfulfilled. But even when ample deduction has been
made for these failures, the odds remaining in his favour are
formidable, and will continue undiminished unless and until we realize
our plight, shuffle off the cramping coils of conservatism,
insularity and self-complacency and brace ourselves to the most
strenuous, the most painful effort we have ever yet put forth. On our
capacity to effect this inward change, rather than upon any diplomatic
arrangements, depends the issue of the struggle which will begin when
military and naval hostilities have come to an end.

CHAPTER XX

PROBLEMS OF THE FUTURE

Plain though these facts are, the Entente nations, and in particular
the British people, either ignore them wholly or misinterpret their
purport. Hence we continue absorbed in the pursuit of interests,
parochial and parliamentary, which though quite human, are utterly off
the line of racial and imperial progress. We obstinately shut our eyes
to the magnitude of the Sphinx question that confronts us, and we
address ourselves to one--and that the least important--of its many
facets, and content ourselves with tackling that. We descant upon the
turpitude of the Teuton who from the regions of idealism in which
Goethe, Herder and their contemporaries dwelt has sunk into shift,
treason and murder, and we proclaim our faith in the ultimate triumph
of right, justice and of the democracy in which alone they flourish.
But this frame of mind, which moves us to identify ourselves with all
that is best in humanity, if cultivated will prove fatal. It accust