dow, the distance yet to
be traversed before the goal can be reached is enormous, and the road
rugged and beset with pitfalls.

A glance at the past and present may enable us to gauge aright the
nature of some of the difficulties that have to be surmounted in the
future.

CHAPTER XIX

PAST AND PRESENT

Let us begin with the present, in view of the circumstance that the
war has brought the allied peoples into a much nearer approach to
union and has more fully systematized their efforts than can ever be
the case in peace time. We find, then, two groups of belligerents
pitted against each other, whose resources in men, money and economic
supplies are strikingly unequal. The Teutons are by far the weaker
side, and even in spite of their long preparations ought to have been
thoroughly beaten long ago. So evident and encouraging was the
comparison that the Entente nations themselves boldly grounded their
calculations on it, and anticipated a brief spell of warfare and a
decisive victory. And this forecast seemed reasonable enough when the
material elements were weighed and contrasted. The Entente communities
occupy 68,031,000 square kilometres of territory, which are inhabited
by a population of 770,060,000, or say 46 per cent. of the entire land
on the globe and 47 per cent. of the entire human race. The Central
Empires, on the other hand, possess no more than 5,921,000 square
kilometres with 150,199,000 inhabitants, which amounts to only 4 per
cent. of dry land on the globe and 9.1 per cent. of mankind. Add to
that the circumstance that in the air our superiority over our
enemies was undisputed, and that the odds in favour of our enlisting
the active support of the Balkan States were overwhelming. The chances
in favour of the Allies, therefore, were and are enormous. That being
so, why, it may well be asked, has the course of the military, naval
and air campaign so uniformly favoured the weaker side? It is no
answer to point out that Germany and Austria had been organizing the
war for over thirty years, or had contrived to mobilize all their
resources when the first shot was fired. That explanation would
account for their progress during the first few months, but not for
the victories they scored down to the beginning of April 1916. It was
loudly proclaimed by British journalists that the Berlin General Staff
had based its plan on the assumption that the struggle would be
decided in a few months and certainly