England and Germany Part 7

And he had cogent personal motives for cultivating cordial relations with the country of his birth. From the Austrian Government he expected to be saved from the necessity of abdicating and expiating his unwisdom. It was his inordinate ambition and vanity which had brought the Bulgarian nation to the very brink of ruin. He it was who had insisted on breaking off negotiations with Turkey during the London Conference and recommencing hostilities. In vain the Chief of the General Staff, Fitcheff,[59] besought him to conclude peace. The importunate military adviser was suddenly relieved of his duties and the second phase of the Balkan war begun. It was Ferdinand, too, who thwarted Russia's peace-making efforts, refused to send delegates to the tribunal of arbitration in Petrograd, and ordered the treacherous attack on the Serbs and the Greeks which culminated in Bulgaria's forfeiting some of the princ.i.p.al fruits of her heroic military exertions.

[59] General Fitcheff has since become Minister of War.

For this series of baleful blunders--to the Bulgars they were nothing more--Ferdinand was known to be alone responsible. He had a.s.sumed the sole responsibility, and he had hoped to gather in the lion's share of the spoils. And as soon as responsibility seemed likely to involve punishment, his Ministers withdrew and exposed his person to the nation. When, after the end of the second Balkan war, General Savoff repaired to Constantinople to better the relations between Bulgaria and Turkey, he invited a number of French and British journalists who happened to be just then in the capital, and he addressed them as follows: "It has come to my ears that in Sofia I am accused of being the person who issued the order to our army to attack our Allies and that I am to be tried for it. They will never dare to prosecute me.

For I have here--" and he thumped his side pocket as he spoke--"the order issued by the real author of the war and in his own handwriting.

He commanded me orally to do this, but I replied that I must have a written order from the Government. Thereupon he shouted: 'I am the supreme chief of the army and am about to give you the order in writing,' indited the behest and handed it to me. That is why he cannot prosecute me. I will show him up. Already now I tell you, so that all may hear, _C'est un coquin, un miserable!_"[60]

[60] This narrative was published by M. Wesselitsky in the _Novoye Vremya_, November 6, 1915.

That was General Savoff's summing-up of his august sovereign. And his forecast proved correct. Ferdinand did not attempt to lay the blame on him, still less to have an indictment filed against him. On the contrary, he kissed Savoff on his return to Sofia and later on made him his adjutant-general. Ferdinand's responsibility being established, his abdication was clamoured for by public opinion. His own estimate of his plight was impregnated with despair. He despatched the abject telegrams mentioned above to his influential friends. It was then that he received a letter signed by the three chiefs of the Liberal groups of the old Stambulovist Party--Radoslavoff, Ghennadieff and Tontcheff--and written, it has been alleged, after consultation between all four parties, exhorting him to reverse the national policy and link Bulgaria's fate with that of Austria. The Coburg prince publicly welcomed them, dismissed the Daneff Cabinet, handed the reins of power to the three self-const.i.tuted saviours of the dynasty and country, and the Treaty of Bucharest was signed in an offhand manner.

The keynote of the policy of the new Cabinet was hatred of Russia, who was held up to public opprobrium by the press of Sofia as the mischief-maker who had betrayed Bulgaria; and as the nation thirsted for a culprit on whom to vent its rage, the legend obtained a certain vogue. At the same time emphatic a.s.surances were given by Count Berchtold that Austria would upset the Treaty of Bucharest, break down the Serbian and Greek barriers that stood between Bulgaria and her natural boundaries, and establish Ferdinand and his dynasty more firmly on the throne. This prospect heartened the King and stimulated his fellow-workers.

But perhaps the most decisive factor in Bulgaria's att.i.tude towards the Central Powers has been that of Russia towards Bulgaria. The Tsardom cherishes tender feelings towards the political ent.i.ty which it called into being. Bulgaria is the creature of the great Slav people which shed its blood and spent its treasure in giving it life and viability, and has ever since felt bound to watch over its destinies, forgive its foolish freaks, and contribute to its political and material well-being. Congruously with this frame of mind, Russia has not the heart to deal with Bulgaria as she would deal under similar provocation with Roumania or Greece. Like the baby cripple, or the profligate son, this wayward little nation ever remains the spoiled child. Hence, do what harm she may to Russia, she is not merely immune from the natural consequences of her unfriendly acts, but certain to reap fruits ripened by the sacrifices of those whose policy she strove to baulk. Conscious of this immense privilege, she takes the fullest advantage of it. Under such conditions no stable coalition of the Balkan States was possible.

The remarkable ascendancy thus won by Germany over Bulgaria is but one of the salient results of her foresight, organization and single-mindedness which the Allies are now beginning to appreciate.

Their ideal policy in the Balkans was to have none. Great Britain in particular was proud of her complete disinterestedness.

Between the Teutons and the Greeks there were no such close ties as those that linked Bulgaria to the Central Empires. The h.e.l.lenic kingdom is a democracy marked by a constant tendency to anarchy. Down to the beginning of the reign of the present monarch its ruler was never more than the merest figure-head, nor its people anything but an amalgam of individuals deficient in the social sense and devoid of political cohesiveness. The late King George, for instance, remained, to the end of his life, an amused spectator of the childish game of politics carried on by his Ministers; and so insecure did he consider his tenure of the kings.h.i.+p, that his frequent threat to "take his hat"

and quit the country for good had become one of the commonplaces of Greek politics. Only a few years ago his reign appeared to be drawing to an ignominious end. His functions were usurped by a military league and his sons removed from the army. Anarchy was spreading, at that time I expressed the opinion that the only person capable of saving Greece--if Greece could yet be saved--was the Cretan insurgent, M.

Venizelos. This suggestion appealed to the Chief of the Military League and was adopted. Venizelos was invited to Athens with the results known to all the world. At first reluctantly tolerated, he was subsequently highly appreciated by King George and was afterwards handicapped by King Constantine, whose impolitic instructions during the Bucharest Conference resulted in sowing seeds of discord between Greece and Bulgaria.

To small countries and petty personal ambitions, a war among the Great Powers brings halcyon days of flattery, bribery and seductive prospects in an imaginary future. In Greece all these and other attractions were dangled before the eyes of men of power and influence. The Sovereign, whose admiration for the Kaiser verges on idolatry, soon extended this platonic sentiment to the Kaiser's army.

And when fortune seemed definitively to espouse the cause of the Central Empires, his admiration was reinforced by fear and the pro-German leanings, which were at first merely platonic, bade fair to harden into active co-operation. It was not until then that the Entente Powers, discerning the fateful character of their errors and the trend of events, resolved after much hesitation and discussion to put forth an effort to retrieve the situation. Of his philo-German tendencies King Constantine gave several public proofs long before the war, and on the psychological soil from which they sprang, German diplomacy raised its typical structure of intrigue and adulation. As the irresistible captain who had shattered the armies of Turkey and Bulgaria, winning undying fame for himself and his country, the King was encouraged to believe that on him devolved the mission of uniting all h.e.l.lenes under his sceptre, building up a larger Greece, consolidating the monarchy within, and ruling as well as reigning. And so well laid was this plan that when the European armies took the field and the Entente Powers counted Greece, then apparently governed by Venizelos, among its cordial friends, the Teutons, sure of their ground, but still working a.s.siduously for their object, put their trust in the Kaiser's royal henchman and their own permanent display of force, and were not disappointed.

Long before the war-cloud burst, the history makers of Berlin recognized the fact that the key to the Dardanelles lay in Sofia, and not only to the Dardanelles, but also the key to the Near East. The statesmen of Austria and Germany discerned that the Bulgars under their guidance could be got to do for Turkey what j.a.pan hoped, and still hopes, to effect for China. It is a work of complete transformation, a sort of political transubstantiation whereby the Bulgars would infuse ichor into the limp veins of the Ottoman organism and recreate a strong political ent.i.ty which would be an instrument in the hands of the Central Empires. The Bulgar knows the Turk, to whom he is more akin by race habits and temperament than to any of the Slav peoples, understands his psychic state, his mode of feeling and thinking, and is therefore qualified to serve as link between the Oriental and the Western. It was in view of this eventuality that the slow, plodding work of grafting Kultur on the Bulgar people was undertaken. Two German schools, one in Sofia and the other in Philippopolis, were the centres whence it was radiated to the ends of the land. In Bulgaria there are many preparatory grammar schools in which tuition for both s.e.xes is free. All scholars who have pa.s.sed through one of the German schools are admitted without any examination into the Grammar School, or Gymnasium, a privilege which works as a powerful attraction. Since Turkey retroceded Karagatch[61] to Bulgaria there are three such centres of Teutonic propaganda in Bulgaria, and I am informed that a fourth will shortly be established in Rustschuk.

[61] One of the suburbs of Adrianople ceded in July 1915.

The record of the economic invasion of Roumania by the Teuton,[62]

supplemented as it was by various complex auxiliary movements of a political character, supplies us with a fresh variation of the trite text that Germany conceived her plan on a vast scale and executed it by co-operation between the State and the individuals, leaving nothing to chance which could be settled by forethought. The ruler of the country was a Hohenzollern, and as he wielded absolute power in matters connected with foreign policy, he had a free hand and kept it efficaciously employed. For over thirty years King Carol transacted the international business of the realm--economic as well as political--with a.s.siduity, conscientiousness and a fair meed of success. He encouraged industry and commerce, and welcomed German and Austrian capital and enterprise. The upshot of his exertions was that in the fullness of time his kingdom, like those of Italy, Bulgaria and Turkey, became to most intents a nascent Teutonic colony. In Roumania, as in Bulgaria, the commercial methods and business ways are German.

The heads of banking establishments and great industries are either Teutons or friends of Teutons. Nearly every big enterprise, commercial and industrial, was launched and kept afloat by capital from the Fatherland. The Discount Bank in Berlin has a vast cellar filled with Roumanian bonds, shares and other securities. So close are the ties that connect the little state with the great empire that even the Roumanian railways have a special convention with those of Prussia.

Here, then, as everywhere else, we are in presence of intelligence wedded to politico-economic enterprise. Individual German firms and the Government worked hand in hand; diplomacy, trade and commerce moved steadily towards the same goal, and attained it.

[62] Roumania's annual imports from Austria-Hungary, according to the latest available statistics, were valued at 136,906,000 francs; from Germany at 183,713,000; and from Great Britain at only 85,470,000 francs. France exported thither goods valued at no more than 35,273,000 francs.

Owing to Roumania's grievances against Russia--whose seizure of Bessarabia nearly forty years ago left a wound which festered for years and has only recently been cicatrized--King Carol concluded a military convention with the Austro-Hungarian empire, the stipulations of which have never been authoritatively disclosed. There is reason to believe that one clause obliged the Roumanian Government to come to the support of the Habsburg Monarchy with all its military resources in case that empire should be wantonly attacked by another Power.

Whether this instrument, which was never laid before the Roumanian legislature for ratification, is deemed to have been vitiated by the lack of this indispensable sanction, or is a.s.sumed to have terminated with the decease of the king who concluded it, is a matter of no real moment. The relevant circ.u.mstance is the unwillingness of Austria-Hungary to invoke the terms of the convention and the resolve of the Bucharest Cabinet to ignore them.

Thus Roumania, like all other neutral states, was well within the sphere of attraction of the Central Empires long before the present conflict was unchained. And the clever tactics by which siege was laid to the sympathies of a nation which at bottom has hardly any traits in common with the besieger, would have entailed a complete revision and remodelling of the polity of Russia, France and Britain, had these Powers had any coherent programme or distant aims. But their motto was: Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

True, none of those States ever designed a political revolution of the Old Continent, such as Napoleon had imagined or Germany is now striving to realize. But neither did they read aright nor even give serious thought to the symptoms of the great conspiracy which was being hatched by others for that purpose. Busied with their party squabbles and social reforms, they took it for granted that international tranquillity which was a condition of the stability of all internal affairs was a.s.sured. Such occasional misunderstandings as might crop up among the Powers could, they imagined, always be smoothed over by manifestations of goodwill and timely concessions.

Fitfulness and hesitancy marked every attempt made by Germany's rivals to push their trade or extend their political relations beyond their own borders.

This lack of enterprise was especially accentuated in their dealings with Turkey. No Powers had done so much to uphold Ottoman sway in Europe as France and Britain, and for a long while their exertions found their natural outcome in a degree of influence at the Sublime Porte which was unparalleled in Turkish history. But once Germany inaugurated her economico-political campaign in the Near East, the principle of neighbourliness was invoked in favour of allowing her to possess herself of a share of the good things going, whereupon Great Britain, and in a lesser degree France, curbed their natural impulse and left most of the field to the pus.h.i.+ng new-comer. For years the writer of these lines pointed out the danger of this self-abnegation, but his insistent appeals for a more active line of conduct were met by the statement that Near Eastern affairs had long ceased to tempt the enterprise or affect the international policy of Great Britain. As though Great Britain were not a member of the European community or her geographical insularity implied political isolation; or as if her policy of equilibrium were capable of being achieved without the employment of adequate means! When I raised my voice against our partic.i.p.ation in the Baghdad railway scheme and bared to the light the political designs underlying it, Cabinet Ministers a.s.sured the country that its scope was exclusively economic and cultural and had no connection with politics! This nave belief and the _laissez-faire_ att.i.tude which it engendered enabled the Teutons to reduce Turkey to economic and political thraldom and to earmark Asia Minor, thenceforward hedged in with the Baghdad and Anatolian railways, as a future German colony.

The closeness and constancy of the relations between economics and politics which easily took root in German consciousness, had for another of its corollaries the dispatch of General Liman von Sanders and his band of officers to reorganize the Ottoman army. This measure struck some observers as the beginning of the end of European peace.

It was thus that the Russian Premier, Kokofftseff, and his colleague, Sazonoff, construed it, and that was the interpretation which I also put upon it. But none of the other interested Governments expressed similar misgivings, nor, so far as one can judge, entertained any. Yet when war was finally declared, Germany's plan of campaign allotted an important role to Turkey not in a possible emergency, but at a date to be determined by the completion of her military and naval equipment.

In this ingenious and comprehensive way, operating at a mult.i.tude of points, but never dissociating economics from politics, never abandoning the work of commercial expansion to the unaided resources of individuals, the Teutonic empires contrived to spread a huge net in whose meshes almost every civilized nation was to some extent entangled. And the subsequent political conduct of many of these was determined in advance by the plight to which they had been thus reduced. Russia was reasonably believed to be incapable of taking the field; Italy was accounted wholly unfitted to bear the weight of the financial burden which a conflict with Germany would lay upon her shoulders; Roumania, it was calculated, would decline to exchange material gains for political returns purchased at a heavy cost; Bulgaria could not afford to estrange Austria's sympathies and need never fear that she might forfeit those of Russia; Sweden, saturated with German Kultur, was one of the foreposts of Teutonism in the north of Europe and might in time be induced to imitate Bulgaria and play for the hegemony of the Scandinavian States with the Kaiser's help; Switzerland was virtually German in everything but political organization; Holland would believe in Prussianism and tremble; Belgium was economically a p.a.w.n in German hands and Antwerp a German port; and in the United States millions of hyphenated Germans would plead the Teuton cause and do the rough work of advancing it by means of their political organization and influence.

CHAPTER XI

THE RIVAL POLICIES

In face of this Teutonic control of the world's trade, politics and news supply, the Great Powers whose outlook, political and economic, was most nearly affected, exhibited a degree of supineness which can only be adequately explained by such a.s.sumptions as one would gladly eliminate. Anyhow the lessons conveyed by eloquent facts fell upon deaf ears. Yet it was manifest, in view of Germany's ingenious combination of economics and politics, and the irresistible co-operation of the State and individuals in applying it, that the slipshod methods of Britain and France could no longer be persisted in without grave danger to these states. To deal with trade and industry as though they were matters that concerned only the particular business firms engaged in them was no longer an economical error, it was also a political blunder. To Government meddling in trade and industry the British people have ever been averse. And their dislike is intelligible although no longer warranted. A glance at Germany's economic campaign and its results ought to have borne out the thesis that individual self-reliance and push are unavailing to cope with a potent organism equipped scientifically, provided with large capital and backed by the resources of diplomacy. New epochs call for fresh methods, and the era of commercial and industrial individualism was closed years ago by the German people. Co-ordination of effort, the combination of politics with economics, and unity of direction were among Germany's methods in the contest, and she adopted them in the grounded belief that commerce and industry lie at the nethermost roots of the vast political movements of the new era.

This is a century of co-operation, of joint efforts for common interests, of union in trade, industry, labour, politics and war. To stand aloof is to be isolated, and isolation means helplessness against danger. Germany was the first Power to grasp these facts, to understand the new phase of life and to adapt herself to it. For this work of readjustment her people were specially endowed by Nature, and in their equipment for the task they saw a mark of election set upon them by their "old G.o.d." For the correlate of co-operation is talent for organization, and with this the Teutons are plentifully gifted.

They feel impelled as it were by instinct to push forward much further on the road already traversed by all nations from isolation to individualism through gregariousness. They opened the new era of amalgamation by co-ordinating, on a vast scale, individual achievements, resources and labour, and directing them to a common end. The allied peoples were meanwhile content to muddle through in the old way. This difference explains much that seems puzzling in the outcome of the struggle.

It has been affirmed somewhat off-handedly that the Latin and British peoples, incapable of united and organized effort, have halted at the individualist stage. They are supposed to lack the b.u.mp of organization. According to this theory among the Germans, who had pa.s.sed through all the intermediate phases and carried individualism to sinister extremes in the past, a reaction set in which called forth the latent powers of organization which they possess. And these have been wielded with brilliant results ever since the unity of the German Empire was first established. Applying the new principle to politics, the statesmen of Berlin grasped the fact that all future conflicts in Europe would be waged by coalitions. Neither Austria-Hungary alone nor the German Empire alone could undertake a world war. That was the genesis of the scheme of welding the two central empires in one politico-military ent.i.ty and then attracting as many other States as possible into their orbit. And the enterprise was conducted so ingeniously that when war was declared, Roumania, Bulgaria and Turkey were tied to the Triple Alliance. And henceforward, whatever the outcome of the war may be, the permanent fusion of Germany and Austria is a foregone conclusion.

By the means described a state of things, actual and potential, was established which rendered Germany's military attack on Europe much less hazardous and doubtful a venture than was at first supposed. For there was not a country on the globe which she or her ally had not subjected to the process of interpenetration, nor was there one which had remained wholly irresponsive. Even Brazil, Chili, Peru, China, Morocco, Persia, Abyssinia, had all experienced its effects. And when at last the harvest-time was come and its fruits were to be ingathered Germany felt that she could count to varying extents on the active sympathy and support of governments, parliaments and nations; on the Turks, the Swiss, the Swedes, the Bulgarians, the Roumanians; on the autocratic ruler of the Greeks and on millions of American-Germans. Every independent religious centre was permeated with an atmosphere composed in Germany. The Caliph and the Sheikh-ul-Islam of the Moslems, the evangelical preachers of the Russian Baltic provinces, Brahmins in India, subjects of the Negus of Abyssinia, the Jews of western Russia and Poland, as well as those of the Netherlands, the Catholics of Switzerland, Holland and Italy, nay, the Vatican itself, raised their voices in the chorus of the millions who sang hosannah to the Highest.[63]

[63] The Highest of All is the official designation of the Kaiser: der Allerhochste.

Dismay was the feeling aroused among the Allies by the quick dramatic moves which precipitated the war. The trump of doom seemed to have sounded at a moment when mankind was on the point of discovering the secret of immortality. The utter unpreparedness of the Allies was the dominant note of the new situation, and its manifestations were countless and disastrous. There was no adequate British expeditionary army to send on foreign service, and there existed no machinery by which such a force could quickly be got together and trained.

Voluntary enlistment was a slowly moving mechanism, and even if it could be made to work more rapidly, there was no way of employing the new soldiers, for whom there were neither barracks nor uniforms nor rifles in sufficiency. And if all these requirements could have been improvised, there were no generals accustomed to handle armies of millions. And even if all those wants had been supplied to hand there was no Government enterprising enough to put them to the best advantage of the nation. Moreover, colonial expeditions were the most extensive military operations which the country had carried on within the memory of the present generation, and it was beyond the power of the authorities not only to organize the imperial defences on an adequate scale but even to realize the necessity of attempting the feat. In a word, the prospect could hardly have been more dismal.

In France it was a degree less cheerless, but still decidedly bleak.

Mobilization there went forward, it is claimed, more smoothly than had been antic.i.p.ated, but not rapidly enough to enable adequate forces to be dispatched in time against the German military flood. The organization of the railway system was most inefficient. And had it not been for heroic Belgium, who, confronted with the alternatives of ruin with honour and safety with ignominy, unhesitatingly chose the better part, the inrush of the Teutons would, it is a.s.serted by military experts, have swept away every obstacle that lay between them and the French capital, which was their first objective. Belgium's magnificent resistance thus saved Paris, gave breathing s.p.a.ce to the French, and enabled the Allies to swing their sword before smiting.

Russia, too, did better than had been augured of her, but not nearly as well as if her resources had been organized by competent experts, alive to the dangers that threatened the empire. On the eve of the war a process of fermentation among the working men of her two capitals was coming to a head, and a revolt, if not a revolution, was being industriously organized. The movement had certainly been fostered, and probably originated, by wealthy German employers in Petrograd, Moscow and other industrial centres. They had hoped to frustrate the mobilization order, r.e.t.a.r.d Russia's entry into the field, and possibly bring about civil strife. And they were within an ace of succeeding.

On the very eve of hostilities reports reached Berlin and Vienna that the revolution was already beginning. But the declaration of war against Germany purified the air, absorbed the redundant energies of the people, and fused all cla.s.ses and parties into a whole-hearted, single-minded nation, giving Russia a degree of union which she had not enjoyed since Napoleon's invasion. But, separated from her allies, she went her own way without much reference to theirs. Her plans had been drafted by her military leaders, and might be modified by local conditions or subsequent vicissitudes, but were neither co-ordinated nor even synchronized with those of France and Britain. Thus the first and most important lesson had still to be mastered.

Liege and Namur having fallen, the danger to Paris struck terror to the hearts of the French, and the public mind was being gradually prepared by the Press to receive the depressing tidings of its capture with dignified calm. The occupation of the capital, it was argued, would not essentially weaken the military strength of the Republic.

For the army would still be intact, and that was the essential point.

Here, for the first time, one notes the almost invincible force of the antiquated opinions to which the Allies still tenaciously clung about warfare as modified by Germany. No misgivings were harboured that the enemy might threaten to burn the capital city if the army refused to capitulate, or that he was capable of carrying out such a threat. War in its old guise, hedged round with traditions of chivalry, with humanitarian restrictions, with international laws, was how the French and their allies conceived it. And it was in that spirit that they made their forecasts and regulated their own behaviour towards the enemy.

The rise of Generals Joffre, Castelnau and Foch and the retreat of the German invaders raised the Allies from the depths of despair to a degree of confidence bordering on presumption. After the departure of the Belgian Government to Antwerp,[64] the occupation of Brussels,[65]

the defeat of the Austrian army by the Serbs and the rout of three German army corps by the Russians,[66] the Western Allies conceived high hopes of the military prowess of the Slavs, and looked to them for the decisive action which would speedily bring the Teutons to their knees. And for a time Russia's continued progress seemed to justify these hopes. Her troops entered Insterburg[67] and pushed on to Konigsberg, which they invested and threatened,[68] and in the south they scored a series of remarkable successes in Galicia. But in the west of Europe the Allies could at most but r.e.t.a.r.d without arresting the advance of the Germans, whose aim was to defeat the French and then concentrate all their efforts on the invasion of the Tsardom. Despite a.s.surances of an optimistic tenor there appeared to be no serious hope of defending Paris, nor were effective local measures adopted for the purpose; and on September 3 the French Government, against the insistent advice of three experienced Cabinet Ministers, suddenly moved to Bordeaux, and earned for itself the nickname of _tournedos a la bordelaise_. On the same historic day the Tsar's troops triumphantly entered Lemberg, restored to that city its ancient name of Lvoff, and proceeded to introduce the Russian system of administration there with all its traditional characteristics. But in lieu of conferring full powers on the Governor of the conquered province, a man of broad views and conciliatory methods, the Government dispatched a narrow-minded official, devoid of natural ability, of administrative training, and of the sobering consciousness of his own defects, and listened to his recommendations. For Russia, like France and Britain, still contemplated the situation and its potentialities through the distorting medium of the old order of things. Their orientation had undergone no change.

[64] August 17, 1914.

[65] August 20, 1914.

[66] August 22, 1914.

[67] August 23, 1914.

[68] August 29, 1914.

One of the immediate consequences of Russian rule in Galicia was to confirm the Vatican in its belief that Austria offered Catholicism far more trustworthy guarantees for its unhindered growth than could ever be expected from the Tsardom.

The famous battle of the Marne[69] infused new energies into the Allies, whose Press organs forthwith took to discussing the terms on which peace might be vouchsafed to the Teutons, and in these stipulations a spirit of magnanimity was displayed towards the enemy which at any rate served to show how little his temper was understood and how enormously his resources were underrated. Soon, however, the mist of ignorance began to lift, and saner notions of the stern interplay of the tidal forces at work were borne in upon the leaders of the allied peoples. One of the first discoveries to be made was the enormous consumption of ammunition required by latter-day warfare and the ease with which the Germans were able to meet this increased demand. That this enormous advantage was the result of scientific organization was patent to all. Nor could it be ignored that an essential element of that organization was the militarization of all workmen whose services were needed by the State. But from the lesson thus inculcated to its application in practice there was an abyss. And as yet that abyss has not been bridged. The most formidable obstacle in the way is offered by the shackles of party politics, which still hamper the leaders of the Entente Powers, and in particular of Great Britain. Industrial compulsion has not yet been moved into the field of practical politics.