hortly occupy that
city as she had occupied Lemberg. The Tsar's troops might then be
expected to push on to Berlin, and to reach it in a few months. And,
painfully aware of the certainty of this consummation, Austria was
dejected and Hungary secretly making ready to secede from the Habsburg
Monarchy. To this soothing gossip even serious statesmen lent a
willing ear. The writer of these remarks was several times asked by
leading personages of the allied Governments whether internal
upheavals were not impending in Germany and Austria, and his assurance
that no such diversion could be looked for then or in the near future
was traversed on the ground that all trustworthy accounts from Berlin,
Vienna and Budapest pointed to a process of fermentation which would
shortly interpose an impassable barrier to the further military
advance of the Central empires. But he continued to express himself in
the same strain of warning, which subsequent events have unhappily
justified.

In October 1914, for instance, he wrote--

"Germany has already shot her bolt, people tell us.
Already? The people who for forty years have been preparing
to establish their rule from Ostend to the Persian Gulf have
expended their energies after three months of warfare? And
the concrete foundations built at such pains and expense in
the German factory that dominates Edinburgh? Was the Teuton
simple-minded enough to fancy that he would be in a position
to utilize this and the other emplacements for his giant
guns within three months after the outbreak of hostilities?
Let us be fair to our enemy and just to ourselves. The
German has not shot his bolt. If time is on our side, it
will also remain on his up to a point which we have not yet
reached. Those who urge that the German must make haste
imply that his resources are gradually drying up, and that
neither his food supplies, nor his chemicals, nor his metals
can be imported so long as we hold command of the seas. His
armies will therefore die of inanition, or their operations
will be thwarted for lack of munitions. This would indeed be
joyful tidings were it true. If false, it is a mischievous
delusion.

"We are told that the German time-table has been upset.
Unquestionably it has. But is the time-table identical with
the programme for which it was drawn up? If it is, then the
march on