ening, we might have
been spared the necessity of signing one day a temporary peace amid
the ruins of European culture.

But no puissant genius in any of the allied countries towered above
the dead level of mediocrity. Great Frenchmen, Britons and Russians
were said to be available, but there was no great man in evidence. And
this want proved disastrous. In Germany, on the other hand, it was
hardly felt. For it was compensated by the existence of a vast human
machine, adaptable to every change of circumstance, capable of
assuming countless Protean forms simultaneously, ready with a solution
for the most unexpected problems, provided with organs suited to the
discharge of every conceivable function, all directed to the same end.
It was the same organism that had worked with such brilliant success
for over thirty years, growing and perfecting itself steadily until it
became the concrete manifestation of a whole system of thought,
sentiment and co-ordinated action. Germany had developed into a
powerful national State in which the spirit of self-surrender for the
good of the community animates all sections alike, all of which
co-operate effectively, through the organizations which they
spontaneously created, for the realization of their common objects.
And therein lay her force.

On the outbreak of war Germany was faced with a group of the most
arduous and intricate problems any Government has ever yet had to
tackle. For most of them she had had the time and the forethought to
prepare. But others arose which had been neither provided for nor
foreseen, in consequence of her mistaken assumption that Great Britain
would hold aloof from the war. The total value of her exports and
imports in the year 1913 was computed at 1,000,000,000 sterling, and
an infinity of fine threads bound her industrial activity with
foreign countries. By Great Britain's declaration of war, for which
Germany was unprepared until the last days of July, nearly all these
threads were snapped asunder, and the industrial and economic life of
the Empire had to be swiftly readjusted to the new conditions. And
here it was that the nation rose as one man to the unparalleled
occasion, faced the tremendous ordeal, and, contrary to the
expectations of its adversaries--ever prone to judge others by
themselves--has continued not merely to exist, but to extend its
conquests ever since.

It was in the financial sphere that the first strain was felt. But
perilous