ng upon the moving platforms of the central urban
nuclei, no crowds of silly useless able-bodied people gaping at
inflammatory transparencies outside the offices of sensational papers
because the egregious idiots in control of affairs have found them no
better employment. Every man will be soberly and intelligently setting
about the particular thing he has to do--even the rich shareholding sort
of person, the hereditary mortgager of society, will be given something
to do, and if he has learnt nothing else he will serve to tie up parcels
of ammunition or pack army sausage. Very probably the best of such
people and of the speculative class will have qualified as cyclist
marksmen for the front, some of them may even have devoted the leisure
of peace to military studies and may be prepared with novel weapons.
Recruiting among the working classes--or, more properly speaking, among
the People of the Abyss--will have dwindled to the vanishing point;
people who are no good for peace purposes are not likely to be any good
in such a grave and complicated business as modern war. The spontaneous
traffic of the roads in peace, will fall now into two streams, one of
women and children coming quietly and comfortably out of danger, the
other of men and material going up to the front. There will be no
panics, no hardships, because everything will have been amply
pre-arranged--we are dealing with an ideal State. Quietly and
tremendously that State will have gripped its adversary and tightened
its muscles--that is all.

Now the strategy of this new sort of war in its opening phase will
consist mainly in very rapid movements of guns and men behind that thin
screen of marksmen, in order to deal suddenly and unexpectedly some
forcible blow, to snatch at some position into which guns and men may be
thrust to outflank and turn the advantage of the ground against some
portion of the enemy's line. The game will be largely to crowd and
crumple that line, to stretch it over an arc to the breaking point, to
secure a position from which to shell and destroy its supports and
provisions, and to capture or destroy its guns and apparatus, and so
tear it away from some town or arsenal it has covered. And a factor of
primary importance in this warfare, because of the importance of seeing
the board, a factor which will be enormously stimulated to develop in
the future, will be the aerial factor. Already we have seen the captive
balloon as an incidental acc