nd midland
towns, with their teeming populations of peaceful wage-earners. In
this instance, however, joint action (the occasion for which is
perhaps not difficult to guess) was distinctly contemplated, and
Germany's _role_ in the coalition was exclusively that of invader.
Her fleet was to be kept intact, and she herself to remain ostensibly
neutral until the first shock was over, and our own battle-fleets
either beaten, or, the much more likely event, so crippled by a
hard-won victory as to be incapable of withstanding compact and
unscathed forces. Then, holding the balance of power, she would
strike. And the blow? It was not till I read this memorandum that I
grasped the full merits of that daring scheme, under which every
advantage, moral, material, and geographical, possessed by Germany,
is utilized to the utmost, and every disadvantage of our own turned
to account against us.

Two root principles pervade it: perfect organization; perfect
secrecy. Under the first head come some general considerations. The
writer (who is intimately conversant with conditions on both sides of
the North Sea) argued that Germany is pre-eminently fitted to
undertake an invasion of Great Britain. She has a great army (a mere
fraction of which would suffice) in a state of high efficiency, but a
useless weapon, as against us, unless transported over seas. She has
a peculiar genius for organization, not only in elaborating minute
detail, but in the grasp of a coherent whole. She knows the art of
giving a brain to a machine, of transmitting power to the uttermost
cog-wheel, and at the same time of concentrating responsibility in a
supreme centre. She has a small navy, but very effective for its
purpose, built, trained, and manned on methodical principles, for
defined ends, and backed by an inexhaustible reserve of men from her
maritime conscription. She studies and practises co-operation between
her army and navy. Her hands are free for offence in home waters,
since she has no distant network of coveted colonies and dependencies
on which to dissipate her defensive energies. Finally, she is,
compared with ourselves, economically independent, having commercial
access through her land frontiers to the whole of Europe. She has
little to lose and much to gain.

The writer pauses here to contrast our own situation, and I summarize
his points. We have a small army, dispersed over the whole globe, and
administered on a gravely defective system. We