, nor
money--save ammunition. Does any pessimist intend to argue that we
shall not get all the ammunition we need? It is inconceivable that we
should not get it. When we have got it the end can be foretold like
the answer to a mathematical problem.

Lastly, while the Germans have nothing to hope for in the way of
further help, we have much to hope for. We have, for example, Rumania
to hope for; and other things needless to mention. And we have in hand
enterprises whose sudden development might completely change the face
of the war in a few hours; but whose failure would not prejudice our
main business, because our main business is planned and nourished
independently of them. One of these enterprises is known to all men.
The other is not. The Germans have no such enterprises in hand.

For all the foregoing argument no military expertise is necessary. It
lies on a plane above military expertise. It appeals to common-sense
and it cannot be gainsaid. I have not yet met anybody of real
authority who has attempted to gainsay it, or who has not endorsed it.
The sole question is, not whether we shall win or lose, but when we
shall win.

For this reason I strongly object to statesmen, no matter who they be,
going about and asserting to listening multitudes that we are fighting
for our very existence as a nation. We most emphatically are not. It
is just conceivable that certain unscrupulous marplots might by
chicane produce such domestic discord in this country as would
undermine the very basis of victory. I regard the thing as in the very
highest degree improbable, but it can be conceived. The result might
be an inconclusive peace, and another war, say, in twenty years, when
we probably _should_ be fighting for our very existence as a nation.
But we are not now, and at the worst shall not be for a long time,
fighting for our very existence as a nation. Nobody believes such an
assertion; pessimists themselves do not believe it. And when
statesmen give utterance to it in the hope of startling the
working-class into a desired course of conduct, they under-rate the
intelligence of the working-class and the result of such oratory is
far from what they could wish.

Our national existence is as safe as it has been any time this
century; indeed, it is safer, for its chief menace has received a
terrible blow, and the Prussian superstition is exploded. All that can
be urged is that we have an international job to finish; that in orde