nd when we can revert to our cherished
narrow interests and our easy-going dilettantism. We feed upon the
hope that in a few brief years the British nation will have got safely
back to its old beaten grooves, and not only business and sport but
everything else will go on as usual. Yet all the salient facts which
force themselves on our attention to-day, all the decisive events of
the past thirty years are cogent proofs of the unbroken sequence of a
trial of strength which the future historian and the present
statesman, if there be one, must characterize as a life-and-death
struggle between the champions of the new Teuton politico-social
ordering and the partisans of the old. But after the lapse of a
generation and with the record of all our losses before us, we have
not yet formed a right conception of the situation, and its issues, or
of the historic forces at work. In these circumstances, no degree of
sagacity can help us to devise the only policy in which salvation
resides. The prevailing mistaken conception must be rectified before
any headway can be made against the currents that are fast bearing us
down. And the time at our disposal is brief.

It needs few words to characterize the effects which the dreamy
optimism of the Entente nations had on their method of mobilizing
their resources to carry on the war. Taken unawares they had nothing
ready. Misapprehending the nature of the issues and the redoubtable
character of the contest, they pursued subordinate aims with
insufficient means. The most daring strategical moves of the enemy, in
war as in diplomacy, they ridiculed as either bluff or madness. The
journalistic campaign in neutral countries they scoffed at as vain,
and put their faith in the final triumph of truth. Their financial
measures, oscillating from one extreme to another, denoted the absence
of any settled plan, of any clear-cut picture of the needs of the
moment. The odds in their favour, which circumstance had given and
circumstance might take away again, they looked upon as inalienable,
until they ended by forfeiting them all. Viewing the campaign as a
transient event, the British Government prosecuted it by means of
make-shifts, instead of radical measures. Obligatory service was
scouted at as un-English. Discriminating customs tariffs were
condemned as heretical. It was not until the enemy had occupied
Poland, overrun Serbia, driven the Allied troops from the Dardanelles,
bent Montenegro to the y