planes,
motor-trucks, ambulances, machine-guns, field-guns, siege-guns, and
millions upon millions of rounds of ammunition.

Transports that from neutral ports should be carrying bully beef, grain,
and munitions, are lying idle at a rent per day of many hundreds of
thousands of pounds, in the harbors of Moudros, Salonika, Aden,
Alexandria, in the Persian Gulf, and scattered along both coasts of
Africa. They are guarded by war-ships withdrawn from duty in the Channel
and North Sea. What, in lives lost, these expeditions have cost both
France and Great Britain, we know; what they have cost in millions of
money, it would be impossible even to guess.

For these excursions far afield it is not the military who are
responsible. There is the highest authority for believing neither
General Joffre nor Lord Kitchener approves of them. They are efforts
launched for political effect by loyal and well-meaning, but possibly
mistaken, members of the two governments. By them these expeditions were
sent forth to seize some place in the sun already held by Germany, to
prevent other places falling into her hands, or in the hope of turning
some neutral power into an ally. It was merely dancing to Germany's
music. It postponed and weakened the main attack. This war should be
fought in France. If it is, Germany will be utterly defeated; she cannot
long survive such another failure as Verdun, or even should she
eventually occupy Verdun could she survive such a victory. When she
no longer is a military threat all she possessed before the war,
and whatever territory she has taken since she began the war, will
automatically revert to the Allies. It then will be time enough to
restore to Belgium, Serbia, Poland, and other rightful owners the
possessions of which Germany has robbed them. If you surprise a burglar,
his pockets stuffed with the family jewels, would you first attempt to
recover the jewels, or to subdue the burglar? Before retrieving your
possessions would it not be better strategy to wait until the burglar
is down and out, and the police are adjusting the handcuffs?

In the first chapter of this book is reprinted a letter I wrote from
Paris to the papers of the Wheeler Syndicate, stating that in no part
of Europe was our country popular. It was a hint given from one American
speaking in confidence to another, and as from one friend to another.
It was not so received. To my suggestion that in Europe we are losing
friends, the answe