was that the British were so lacking in
self-respect that they would listen to such doctrines. A noble and
unsullied past has given the British people the right to be in the
highest sense a military nation. For a century the sun has never
risen, but its rays have fallen on the face of a Briton who has died
for liberty. Wherever Britain has been compelled to draw the sword
there has followed freedom and peace. There is the record of India,
Canada, of Egypt and of South Africa to point to. No person unless
steeped to the eye-brows in pro-Germanism can, in the face of that
record, assert that Great Britain ever used her military power to
oppress the weak, or tyrannize over the people she, of necessity, had
to conquer. Why then should Britain be asked to disarm and turn over
the business of maintaining the world's peace to the Hun and the
Turk? To preach anti-militarism to a British people is to insult their
intelligence. Britain alone of all nations has brought peace with her
sword. The interests of Christianity, of humanity and of civilization
demand that she be always a great military power. Had she not listened
to the pro-German pleas of the so-called anti-militarists,
Austria-Germany would not have dared to dream of conquering the world.
Much suffering would have been avoided, and life and treasure would
have been saved. This war is fairly laid at the door of those who
practised and preached anti-militarism in the British Empire. If Great
Britain had possessed a national army of half a million men in 1913,
there would have been no war.

Somebody has to police the world and the best policeman is the man who
wears khaki and speaks the English tongue.

CHAPTER IV

THE CALL TO ARMS

In the War of 1870, the Germans advanced across the Rhine on the
frontier of France. The independent State of Luxemburg and the Kingdom
of Belgium were not disturbed. The Germans at that time respected the
neutrality of these countries. They kept the treaties that had been
made years before, guaranteeing these countries from invasion in case
of war. Bismarck, although a man of "blood" and "iron," as a rule,
respected treaties.

With the French frontier bristling with guns, fortresses and
entrenchments that had been deliberately prepared in advance, the
Germans, in 1914, stood a good chance of being beaten in the first
round if they had attacked the eastern frontier of France on the
declaration of war. Behind a ring of entrenchmen