eme of privy attacks on the traders of all nations, devised as a
last resort, in lieu of naval victory, can be successful when it is no
longer a surprise. And when I read history, I am strengthened in my
belief that morality is all-important. I do not find that any war
between great nations was ever won by a machine. The Trojan horse will
be trotted out against me, but that was a municipal affair. Wars are won
by the temper of a people. Serbia is not yet defeated. It is a frenzied
and desperate quest that the Germans undertook when they began to seek
for some mechanical trick or dodge, some monstrous engine, which should
enable the less resolved and more excited people to defeat the more
resolved and less excited. If we are to be defeated, it must be by them,
not by their bogey-men. We got their measure on the Somme, and we found
that when their guns failed to protect them, many of them threw up their
hands. These men will never be our masters until we deserve to be their
slaves.

So I am glad to be able to end on a note of agreement with the German
military party. If they defeat us, it will be no more than we deserve.
Till then, or till they throw up their hands, we shall fight them, and
God will defend the right.

SOME GAINS OF THE WAR

_An Address to the Royal Colonial Institute, February 13, 1918_

Our losses in this War continue to be enormous, and we are not yet near
to the end. So it may seem absurd to speak of our gains, of gains that
we have already achieved. But if you will look at the thing in a large
light, I think you will see that it is not absurd.

I do not speak of gains of territory, and prisoners, and booty. It is
true that we have taken from the Germans about a million square miles of
land in Africa, where land is cheap. We have taken more prisoners from
them than they have taken from us, and we have whole parks of German
artillery to set over against the battered and broken remnants of
British field-guns which were exhibited in Berlin--a monument to the
immortal valour of the little old Army. I am speaking rather of gains
which cannot be counted as guns are counted, or measured as land is
measured, but which are none the less real and important.

The Germans have achieved certain great material gains in this War, and
they are fighting now to hold them. If they fail to hold them, the
Germany of the war-lords is ruined. She will have to give up all her
bloated ambitions, to purge and live