that, if Germany had foreseen a long-drawn struggle, the war would never have begun, and all the misery of the past year and a half would have been spared. Although compelled to fight along lines which her military writers have always condemned, Germany, beaten at the Marne, was ready with a second line of defence at the Aisne. What a contrast between military and psychological intelligence is presented by a nation which has deprived itself of every chance except complete victory; for it has, of set purpose, so acted in war as to inspire in its foes the iron resolution to conquer or to die.
There is some reason for thinking that the German psychology of war has gone astray because military autocrats have been led to judge of other people by their own. The German subjugation by the State is so excessive that it is but little removed from slavery. Methods of 'frightfulness' are put in force by the slave-driver because he knows by experience that a slave will be crushed into submission by them. The effects that they are likely to produce in a free nation are sufficiently indicated by a letter I have recently received:
'One of my sons sent me a German incendiary bomb which I exhibited here: it was not, however, with the idea of forcing the men to work harder than they were doing, for they were already working as hard as possible, but rather with the idea of bringing the war a little closer home to our men; for in this little Worcestershire town, than which none is more unmilitary, the war seems a long way off. One of our managers was in London the day after the September Zeppelin raid, and some of the officers took him round to Liverpool Street, and they went through some wrecked buildings which the police had not had time to tidy up. From the sixth-floor front room of this building they picked up handfuls of human remains—flesh, bone, skin, and clothes. He put some of this in a bottle with spirits and brought