the Socialists and
working classes; in France and Britain they were democrats and
pacifists; in Italy they were rabid nationalists or neutralists
according to the political sentiments of their environment; in Turkey,
Morocco, Egypt and Persia staunch friends of Islam. They intrigued
against dynasties, conspired against cabinets, reviled influential
publicists, fostered strikes and tumults, set political parties and
entire states by the ears, dispelled grounded suspicions and armed
various bands of incendiaries and assassins.

But in spite of cogged dice and poisoned weapons, the comprehensive
way in which the enterprise was conceived, the consummate skill with
which it was wrought out towards a satisfactory issue, the
whole-heartedness of the nation which, although animated by a fiery
patriotism that fuses all parties and classes into one, is yet
governed with military discipline, offer a wide field for imitation
and emulation. For the changes brought about by the first phases of
the war are but fruits of seed sown years ago and tended ever since
with unfailing care, and unless suitable implements, willing hands and
combined energies are employed in digging them up and casting them to
the winds, the second crop may prove even more bitter than the first.

CHAPTER II

THE GERMAN SYSTEM OF PREPARATION

On the historic third of August when war was formally declared, its
nature was as little understood by the Allies as had been its
imminence. The statesmen who had to full-front its manifestations were
those who had persistently refused to believe in its possibility, and
who had no inkling of its nature and momentousness. Most of them,
judging other peoples by their own, had formed a high opinion of the
character of the German nation and of the pacific intentions of its
Government, and continued to ground their policy in war time on this
generous estimate, which even when upset by subsequent experience
still seems to linger on in a subconscious but not inoperative state.
At first their preparations to meet the emergency hardly went beyond
the expedients to which they would have resorted for any ordinary
campaign. In this they resembled a sea-captain who should make ready
to encounter a gale when his ship was threatened by a typhoon. Hence
their unco-ordinated efforts, their chivalrous treatment of a
dastardly foe, their high-minded refusal to credit the circumstantial
stories of sickening savagery emanating firs