d no eye for the triumphant progress of the German campaign
that had been going forward for years unchecked, or, if they discerned
any of its episodes, saw them only through the softening and
distorting medium of deceptive assurances and explanations emanating
from Berlin. And on the strength of these illusive phrases they kept
the country in a state of unpreparedness for the military form of the
struggle for which our enemy was making ready, and if they had had
their way our navy--which was our anchor of salvation--would also
perhaps have been shorn of its strength.

When at last the war broke out, it was our party politicians, the men
to whom we still look up for light and guidance, who misinterpreted
its nature and underestimated the urgent needs of the Empire. It was
they who conceived the campaign as though it were one of our
occasional colonial expeditions, and would fain base the strength of
our land army abroad on the small number of troops which the
Government had conditionally undertaken to provide. And throughout the
first sixteen months of the war, it was they who went on doling out
contingents with Troy weights and measures like Mrs. Partington
beating back the tidal waves with a mop. It was they, too, who were at
extraordinary pains and risked their prestige, to throw away the
splendid privileged position which, at the outset of the struggle, we
chanced to occupy in South-Eastern Europe. Every blunder into which
petty municipal minds could fall when confronted with a wild
revolutionary welter, marked the hesitant policy of the British
Government. This aimless chaos of soul was the main cause of the
woeful waste of our political advantages and enormous resources in
the accomplishment of secondary ends which generally led nowhere. It
was thus that they forfeited the active support of Turkey, Bulgaria
and Greece, foolishly stood by applauding every step those nations
took towards the camp of our enemies, and then felt constrained to
turn to their own people whom they had unwittingly misled and call
upon it for the sacrifice of the flower of its manhood.

It was they who sacrificed, through sheer administrative incapacity,
the decided superiority over the Teutons which we enjoyed in the air
at the outset of the war. It is now admitted that our mastery in that
region was then complete. All that the country demanded of them was
that they should hold it. But what with divided control, restricted
views, and the