rs it is for the nation itself to
make due preparation for the momentous changes in the social and
political system of Europe to which the present crisis is but the
prelude.

And although much has been spoken and written on the subject since the
war began, little permanent work has as yet been done. And there are
few signs of a radical change for the better. The confusion and
incongruousness that mark the ideas of the reformers, and the
hesitancy and conflicting interests of politicians make one dubious of
the outcome of the present contest. Almost everything essential would
appear to be still lacking to the Allies, and the nature of the coming
"peace period" is not realized, because the war is looked upon as an
isolated phenomenon which began in July 1914, and will end when
hostilities have ceased. Another belief equally misleading and
mischievous is that the Teuton race can be paralysed if not crushed,
and that for fifty or sixty years to come no revival of its energies,
no recrudescence of its morbid aggressiveness need be apprehended. If
we continue to shape our conduct on that assumption we may find
ourselves one day in a Serbonian bog from which there is no rescue.
However stringent the conditions which the Allies may be able to
impose on their enemies, there will still remain a keen, strenuous,
irrepressible race of at least a hundred and twenty millions, endowed
with rare capacities for organization, cohesion, self-sacrifice and
perseverance, whom no treaties can bind, no scruples can restrain, no
dangers intimidate. At any moment a new invention, a favourable
diplomatic combination, would suffice to move them to burst all bounds
and resume the military, naval and aerial contest anew.

Even now, while the war is still raging, they are busy with
comprehensive plans for the economic struggle which will succeed it.
Nor are they content to weave schemes. They have already begun to
carry them out. To mention but a few of the less important
enterprises, as symptoms of the German solicitude for detail, there
was a numerous gathering of railway representatives, Austrian,
Hungarian and German, in August 1915, to consider the means of
readjusting the railway service to the conditions which the peace
would usher in. Among the projects laid before the meeting and
insisted on by various financial institutions was the reconstruction
on a new basis of the Sleeping Car Company, from which Belgian capital
is to be excluded.[1