minimum; it means new
and increased taxation in many directions; and, as a consequence, heavy
increases in the cost of living; it means sharply diminished spending for
large sections of our population, and serious pinching for our
professional and middle classes.

But the nation, as a whole, makes no lament. We look our taxes in the
face, and we are beginning to learn how to save. We have our hearts fixed
on the future; and we have counted the cost.

The money then is no difficulty. Our resisting power, our prosperity even,
under the blows of war, have been unexpectedly great.

But what are we getting for our money?

In the case of the Navy, the whole later course of the war, no less than
the Battle of Jutland, has shown what the British Navy means to the cause
of the Allies. It is as I have said, the root fact in the war; and in the
end, it will be the determining fact; although, of itself, it cannot
defeat Germany _as we must defeat her_; at any rate in any reasonable
time.

Then as to the Army. Take first of all the administrative side. To
what--in the last four months--has come that wonderful system of
organisation and supply I tried to sketch in my fourth Letter, largely in
the words of some of the chief actors in it?

Within the last fortnight, a skilled observer has been reporting to the
British public his impressions of the "Army behind the Lines" in France,
as I saw a portion of it last February, in the great British supply bases
and hospital camps, on the lines of communication, and throughout the
immense and varied activities covered by the British motor transport.

"The Germans," says this recent eye-witness, "have persisted that, even if
we could find the men, we could not make the machine, which they have been
perfecting for forty years and more. But _it is here!_--operating with
perfect smoothness; a machine, which in its mere mass and intricacy,
almost staggers the imagination. One cannot speak of the details of the
system for fear of saying something which should not be told; but it is
stupendous in its proportion, dealing as it does with the methodical
handling of the men in their hundreds of thousands, of all their equipment
and supplies, food, miscellaneous baggage and ammunition, and with the
endless trains of guns--guns--guns, and shells, by millions upon millions,
all brought from England, and all here in their place, or moved from place
to place with the rhythm of clock-work. One cannot co