ch of the Dreadnoughts was opened German
armoured ships had a displacement of no more than 13,000 tons. The
larger type of battleship, which was afterwards constructed, could not
pass through the Canal, which had to be deepened. The necessary work
was so thoughtfully and opportunely taken in hand that it was
terminated in July 1914, just when the harvest for that year was also
ingathered. Asphyxiating gas had been manufactured in the year 1911,
as the Russians have discovered on certain of the machines. Thus when
the fatal hour struck, everything was ready.

In the financial sphere, too, we find the same comprehensive survey,
the same eye for detail, the same forethought and combination. When
hostilities broke out British banks held about L1,100,000,000 of their
depositors' money. A large percentage of this had been employed to
discount foreign, and in especial German bills, so that the paper
remained in Great Britain and the gold was transferred to Germany,
where it plays its part against us. But those marvellous efforts put
forth with such effect by our enemies made no appeal to our rulers.
Nowhere in the British Empire was there any man of mark thinking and
acting for the community. The political pilots who had charge of the
state-ship possessed neither chart nor compass nor rudder. Neither did
they feel the need of these things. The Government disbelieved in war
and was minded, if a struggle should be precipitated, to keep out of
it. Nobody envisaged the needs and interests of the Empire as aspects
of a single problem. Nobody had any clear-cut plan for the working out
of the destinies of the British people. The interests of party, the
expediency of local reforms, the squabbles between this faction and
that, constituted the burning topics of the hour, and there were none
other. And it was while we were thus wrangling with and threatening
each other that the blast of the clarion ushered in the day of doom.

The secrets of nature, revealed by science to a nation which
acknowledges no restraints, then became weapons of wholesale
destruction to be used to subjugate all civilization. Now, there are
some reasons for assuming that civilization will escape the thraldom,
but there are unhappily equally cogent grounds for apprehending that
some of its most precious achievements will be irrecoverably lost and
others greatly impaired. Had there been a master mind at the helm of
the British state-ship before the war or at its op