neutral countries of Europe. Lord Robert Cecil is reported in The Times of December 3 as saying that 'The business of the Foreign Office was to try to make things work smoothly; to secure our rights not only without infringing the rights of neutrals, but also without getting into dangerous and acrimonious disputes'; but these desirable objects can be and have been purchased at too dear a price. Lincoln did not give way in order to make things work smoothly, and the peril of America in the civil war is nothing to the peril of Europe. Surely our position could have been put before neutral nations by a wise and firm diplomacy taking some such line as this: 'The conditions are novel and must be met by greater stringency in order to prevent the war dragging on and bringing financial ruin. To end the war by the means we propose to take will be best for you, best even for Germany. Your trade will be temporarily inconvenienced, but we are prepared to make generous recompense when the war is over or at once in cases of special hardship. England can be trusted to be just.' If only such a firm but friendly policy had been carried out from the very first what misery would have been saved.
I will conclude with a few thoughts on our army's greatest need—a scientific spirit of experiment ever obedient to the call of a swift, alert intelligence. The want has been far more seriously felt in the new conditions of trench warfare than in the comparatively well-known tactics of the first months of the war. It is interesting to reflect that the German army failed completely in the part of the campaign for which it had prepared and towards which it looked with confidence, but that it has been remarkably successful in the unexpected trench warfare. And yet we may be sure