armies were checked. They
sustained an overwhelming defeat in France, Russia was advancing
against them towards the Carpathians, and I believe in East Prussia.
That is not the case to-day. Why? The German workmen came in;
organized labour in Germany prepared to take the field. They worked
and worked quietly, persistently, continuously, without stint or
strife, without restriction for months and months, through the autumn,
through the winter, through the spring. Then came that avalanche of
shot and shell which broke the great Russian armies and drove them
back. That was the victory of the German workmen."[121]

[121] Mr. Lloyd George's speech at Bristol. Cf. _Daily
Telegraph_, September 10, 1915.

Great Britain is the classic land of strikes. Strikers are sacred
among us. Industrial compulsion is rank heresy.

That is one of our difficulties, and by no means the least formidable.
The nation, despite the superb example of patriotic heroism given by
all classes, parties, provinces and colonies of the Empire, is still
deficient in cohesiveness. No fire of enthusiasm has yet burned
fiercely enough among all sections of the Empire and all members of
the race to fuse them in such a compact unified organism as we behold
in the Teuton's Fatherland. Read the characteristic given of us by the
ex-German Minister Dernburg, and say whether it is over-coloured.
Discoursing on the difficulties which Britain has to cope with in
carrying on the war, he says: "They are intensified ... by the
narrow-minded customs of the English trade unions, which contrast with
the patriotic behaviour of the German associations of the like nature
as night contrasts with day."[122] This is melancholy reading for
those whose hopes are fervent for a bright future of the British race,
and it prepares them to listen in anxious silence to the general
conclusion at which the Prussian ex-Minister arrives: "It is in the
highest degree improbable," he says, "that after the winding up of
this contest England will be able to keep or wield any form of
economic superiority whatever over Germany."

[122] _Berliner Tageblatt_, March 9, 1916.

In our Allies we find a strong touch of resemblance to ourselves.
Their state of unpreparedness is amazing, if less desperate than ours.
Russia, it is true, did much better at the outset than friend or foe
anticipated, and she might have done quite well if only she had been
supplied with munitions. But she had not