y problem under the sun. It is largely to this
dilettante temperament of the nation and its rulers that we owe the
disasters we have sustained and the dangers with which we are
threatened.

Looking back, then, dispassionately upon the movement, deliberately
organized over thirty years ago by the restless German mind and pushed
steadily forward ever since over diplomatic barriers, financial
hindrances, economic obstacles and international laws, one is struck
less by the unparalleled magnitude of the enterprise than by the
blindness and sluggishness of its destined victims. And it is largely
in these and kindred negative qualities that we have to seek for the
clue to the astonishing sequence of successes scored by our enemies in
their military and naval, as well as their politico-economic,
campaigns. Moreover, these same defects, deep-rooted and widespread
among the allied peoples, constitute their main source of weakness
during the economic and decisive tug-of-war which will be ushered in
by the treaty of peace. For the temperament, traditions and strivings
of each of these nations are so many obstacles to the gathering of
their scattered moral energies and wasted spiritual forces in one
fertilizing stream. They are bent on joining incompatible elements in
a political synthesis. In the name of national independence and by way
of a telling protest against the vassalage which binds Austria to
Germany, the Entente nations spurn the notion of any common accord
which requires the practice of self-surrender as a base, and are
resolved under the strain of circumstance to present such a
loosely-joined front to the enemy as will not involve their foregoing
one iota of their freedom or one tittle of their national claims. How,
in these conditions, they expect ever to rise to that height of moral
fervour without which the quasi-ascetic effort demanded of them is
inconceivable, has not yet been explained. As usual, they count upon
effects without causes, upon an ingathering of the harvest with no
preceding seedtime. Now, interdependence and compromise are the
indispensable conditions of that cohesion which alone can engender the
force required. A condition approaching organic coherency must be
attained before a smooth working system can be created among the
Allies. But as each of them is still rooted to the past, permeated by
its own interests and aspirations, and jealous not only of the
substance of its liberty but also of the sha