n quality. Her ally, Russia, also had a large army
on the other side of Germany, altho one not so perfectly organized as
that of France. By adding to the French military defensive forces a
comparatively small British Expeditionary Force of very high quality,
organized as far as possible on the principle about which von der Goltz,
in the introduction to his famous book, "The Nation in Arms," had
written, we could provide what that eminent writer had suggested would
be formidable, could it be properly organized, even against the German
masses of troops. In the introduction to his "Nation in Arms" he had
declared that, "Looking forward into the future we seem to feel the
coming of a time when the armed millions of the present will have played
out their part. A new Alexander will arise who, with a small body of
well-equipped and skilled warriors, will drive the impotent hordes
before him, when, in their eagerness to multiply, they shall have
overstepped all proper bounds, have lost internal cohesion, and, like
the green-banner army of China, have become transformed into a
numberless but effete host of Philistines."

This, of course, did not mean that the little Expeditionary Force could
by itself cope with the admirably organized and enormous German Army,
but it did point to the growing importance in these times of high morale
and quality, and to the value that even a small force, if sufficiently
long and closely trained, might prove to have, if placed in a proper
position alongside the excellent soldiers of France. A careful study had
made us think that the addition of even a small force of such quality to
those of France and Russia would provide the combined armies with a good
chance of defeating any German attempt at the invasion and dismemberment
of France.

But in addition to and apart from all this, the British Navy had been
raised before 1914 to a strength unexampled in its history, and Mr.
Churchill had for the first time introduced in the autumn of 1911 the
valuable principle of a war staff, fashioned with a view to the
systematic study of modern naval war in co-operation with the forces on
land.

These naval reforms had helped to confer the fresh power which took
shape in the blockade which was in the end to prove decisive in the
struggle. The heads of the newly organized Military General Staff met
the representatives of the Admiralty War Staff at systematically held
meetings of the Committee of Imperial Defens