wo million prisoners and two million Poles on whom
they can draw not only for agricultural work but also for skilled
labour. And the authorities of both those empires are employing their
war prisoners very freely. Here, as everywhere else, the Teuton is
enterprising. I have seen photographs of Russians in Germany harnessed
and employed as beasts of burden. At any rate, it is no secret that
from the latter half of the year 1915 Germany and Austria were far
ahead of Great Britain, France, Russia, the United States and Japan
_combined_ in the amount of munitions they turned out every week. And
they are still ahead of them to-day. This fact, which can be verified,
has an ominous ring. What it connotes is that our enemies have no
strikes, no conscientious objectors, no fiddling with obligatory
service, industrial or military. Each man is at his country's beck and
call. Germany is free from strikers, slackers and such-like
anti-social types.

In Russia the want of working men is felt keenly. It is one of the
main elements of the sharp rise of prices there. In France, too, the
number of hands needed is very great, and the loss inflicted by their
withdrawal from the labour market is more sensible than the average
reader has any notion of. And far from being filled, these gaps are
becoming wider day by day. This shortage is a source of solicitude to
the Government of the Republic.

What it portends may readily be imagined. It certainly compels us to
qualify the cheering assertion that time is on our side. What else it
implies may be left to the imagination of the reader.

More serious still than the financial burden, or the dearth of
workmen, is the inadequacy of the mercantile marine to the needs of
the Allies in general, and of Great Britain in especial. To this
privation submarine warfare has contributed materially. And there is
not the slenderest ground for hope that the Germans will desist from
it during this campaign. On the contrary, they will intensify it. Of
the neutrals, some are too weak and others too timid to enter an
energetic protest against this violation of international law. The
freight-carrying capacity of the transports still available is less
than the British optimist realizes. How much less, it would be
unfruitful to inquire. It is enough to know that in this matter, too,
we had better seek a more helpful ally than time. Those who are most
conversant with these elements of the problem are haunted by a re