I

N a recent article I said that for reasons discoverable and undiscoverable the military situation had been of late considerably falsified in the greater part of the Press. This saying (which by the way was later confirmed by the best military experts writing in the Press) aroused criticism both public and private. That it should have been criticised in certain organs was natural, for these organs had certainly been colouring or manipulating their war news, including casualties, chiefly by headlines and type, and even influencing their expert analysis of warnews, to suit what happened to be at the moment their political aims.

Even the invasion scare was last week revived by the "Daily Mail" as an aid to compulsion. The "Daily Mail" asserted that, whatever we might say, invasion was possible. True. It is. Most things are. But invasion is responsibly held to be so wildly improbable that our military, as distinguished from our naval, plans are permitted practically to ignore the possibility. Compulsion or no compulsion, those plans will be the same. They will be unaffected by any amount of invasion-scaring, and therefore to try to foster pessimism in the public by alarums about invasion is both silly and naughty.

Newspapers quite apart, however, there has been in the country a considerable amount of pessimism which I have not been able to understand, much less sympathise with; pessimism of the kind that

refuses to envisage the future at all. It has not said: "We shall be beaten." But it has groaned and looked gloomy, and asked mute questions with its eyes. It has resented confident faith and demanded with sardonic superiority the reasons for such faith.

Of the tribe of pessimists I count some superlative specimens among my immediate acquaintances. The explanation of their cases is, I contend, threefold. First, they lack faith, not merely in the Allied arms, but in anything. They have not the faculty of faith. Secondly, they unconsciously enjoy depression, and this instinct distorts all phenomena for them. Thus they exhibited no satisfaction whatever at the capture of Przemysl full of men and munitions by the Russians, whereas the recapture of Przemysl empty of men and munitions by the Germans filled them with delicious woe. Thirdly, they lack patience, and therefore a long-sustained effort gets on their nerves. Others I can inoculate with my optimism, but the effect passes quickly, and each succeeding reinoculation has been less and less effective, with the monotonous questioning, ever more sardonic in tone: "How can you be deluded by the official bulletins?" or: "What do you know about war, to make you so cocksure?"

The truth is that I am not deluded by the official bulletins. I don't know how long it is since I learnt to appreciate official bulletins at their true value, but it is a long while ago. A full perception

of the delusiveness of official bulletins can only be obtained by reading histories of the war. The latest I have read are those of Mr. John Buchan and Mr. Hillaire Belloc. (Mr. Buchan's is good. Mr. Belloc's is more than good: it is-apart from a few failures in style, due either to fatigue or to the machinery of dictation-absolutely brilliant, both militarily and politically. I am inclined to rate the last dozen pages of Mr. Belloc's book as the finest piece of writing yet produced by the war.) And when one compares, in these works, the coherent, impartial, and convincing accounts of, say, the first month of the war, with the official bulletins of the Allies during that month, one marvels that even officialism could go so far in evasion and duplicity, and the reputation of official bulletins is ruined for the whole duration of the conflict. No wonder the contents of the Allied newspapers in that period inspired the Germans with a scornful incredulity, which nothing that has since happened can shake.

It is not that official bulletins are incorrect; they are incomplete, and, therefore, misleading. The policy which frames them seems now to be utterly established, but my motion that it is a mistaken policy remains unaltered. When the policy is pushed as far as the suppression of isolated misfortunes which flame in the headlines of the enemy Press from Cologne to Constantinople, then I begin to wonder whether I am living in three dimensions or in four.

If, then, he does not rely on the official bulletins, and he has no military expertise, how is the civilian justified in being optimistic? The reply is that the use of his common-sense may justify his optimism. The realm of common-sense being universal, even war comes within it. And the fact is that the major aspects of the war are no more military than they are political, social, and psychological. Take one of the most important aspects—the character of generals. It cannot be denied that after ten months, confidence in Joffre has in

creased. At the beginning of the war, when the German plan was being exactly followed and was succeeding, when the Germans had an immense advantage of numbers, when their reserves of men and munitions were untouched, when everything was against us, and everything in favour of the Germans, Joffre, aided by the British, defeated the Germans. He defeated them by superior generalship. Common-sense says that now, when the boot is on the other leg, Joffre will assuredly defeat the Germans-and decisively, and commonsense is quite prepared to wait until Joffre is ready. Again, take the case of the Grand Duke. The Grand Duke has shown over and over again that he is an extremely brilliant general of the first order. In the very worst days, when everything was against him and everything in favour of the Germans, as in the West, he held his own and he has continually produced many more casualties in the German ranks than the Germans have produced in his ranks. He still has many things against him, but it is not possible reasonably to believe that the Grand Duke will let himself in for a disaster. That he should avoid a disaster is all that the West front demands of him at present.

On the other side, General von Moltke, head of the German Great General Staff, has been superseded. What German General has advanced in reputation? There is only one answer-von Hindenberg. Von Hindenberg won the largest (not the most important) victory of the war in the Battle of Tannenberg. He won it because the ground was exceedingly difficult, and because he knew the ground far better than any other man on earth. He was entitled to very high credit. He got it. He became the idol of the German populace, and the bugbear of the Allied countries. But he has done nothing since. Soon after Tannenberg he made a fool of himself on the Russian frontier, and showed that success had got into his head. subsequently initiated several terrific attempts, all of which were excessively costly and none of which was carried through. If he has not ceased to be

He

an idol, he has at any rate ceased to be a bugbear.

As for the average intelligence of the opposing forces, it may be said that Prussian prestige, though it dies very slowly, is dying, even in the minds of our pessimists. Their zest for elaborate organization of plan gave the Germans an immense advantage at the start, but it is proved that, once the plan has gone wrong, they are at the best not better in warfare than ourselves. Their zest for discipline, and their reserves, have enabled them to stave off a catastrophe longer than perhaps any other nation could have staved it off. But time is now showing that excessive discipline and organization produce defects which ultimately outweigh the qualities they spring from. The tenacity of the Germans is remarkable, but does it surpass ours? Man for man, a soldier of the Allies is better than a soldier of the Central Powers-or ten thousand observers have been deceived. As for the intelligence of the publics upon whose moral the opposing forces ultimately depend, it is undeniable that the German public is extremely hysterical, and far more gullible even than ourselves at our very worst. The legends believed by the German public today are ridiculous enough to stamp Germany for a century as an arch-simpleton among nations. Its vanity is stupendous, eclipsing all previously known vanities. The Great General Staff must know fairly well how matters stand, and yet not the mere ignorant public, but the King of Bavaria himself, had the fatuity as late as last week to talk about the new territory that Germany would annex as a result of the war!

In numbers we in the West had got the better of them, and were slowly increasing our lead, before Italy, by joining us, increased the Allies' advantage at a stroke by over three-quarters of a million fully mobilised men, and much more than as many reserves,

In financial resources there is simply no comparison between the enemy and ourselves. We are right out of sight of the enemy in this fundamental affair.

We lack nothing-neither leading, nor brains, nor numbers, nor money-save ammunition. Does any pessimist intend to argue that we shall not get all the ammunition we need? It is inconceivable that we should not get it. When we have got it the end can be foretold like the answer to a mathematical problem.

Lastly, while the Germans have nothing to hope for in the way of further help, we have much to hope for. We have, for example, Rumania to hope for; and other things needless to mention. And we have in hand enterprises whose sudden development might completely change the face of the war in a few hours; but whose failure would not prejudice our main business, because our main business is planned and nourished independently of them. One of these enterprises is known to all men. The other is not. The Germans have no such enterprises in hand.

For all the foregoing argument no military expertise is necessary. It lies on a plane above military expertise. It appeals to common-sense and it cannot be gainsaid. I have not yet met anybody of real authority who has attempted to gainsay it, or who has not endorsed it. The sole question is, not whether we shall win or lose, but when we shall win.

For this reason I strongly object to statesmen, no matter who they be, going about and asserting to listening multitudes that we are fighting for our very existence as a nation. We most emphatically are not. It is just conceivable that certain unscrupulous marplots might by chicane produce such domestic discord in this country as would undermine the very basis of victory. I regard the thing as in the very highest degree improbable, but it can be conceived. The result might be an inconclusive peace, and another war, say, in twenty years, when we probably should be fighting for our very existence as a nation. But we are not now, and at the worst shall not be for a long time, fighting for our very existence as a nation. Nobody believes such an asser

W

E have known you for a long time. We have known you since we Russians came to a communion with Western Europe and began to draw from the great spiritual treasury created by our brethren of Western Europe.

From generation to generation we have watched intently the life of England, and have stored away in our minds and our hearts everything brilliant, peculiar, and individual, that has impressed itself upon the English word, the English thought, and the English life.

We have always wondered at the breadth and the manifoldness of the English soul, in whose literature one finds, side by side, Milton and Swift, Scott and Shelley, Shakespeare and Byron. We have always been amazed by the incessant and constantly growing power of civic life in England; we have always known that the English people was the first among the peoples of the world to enter upon a struggle for civic rights, and that nowhere does the word freedom ring so proud and so triumphant as it does in England.

With wonder and veneration, have we watched the English people, that combines the greatest idealism with the most marvellous creative genius, that constantly transforms words into deeds, aspirations into actions, thoughts and feelings into institutions, go onward, from step to step, reaching out into the heavens, yet never relinquishing the earth, higher and higher along its triumphant road, still onward in its work of creating the life of England.

Kingdoms and peoples, cultures and institutions, pass away like dreams. But thoughts and words remain, whether they be of white men, or black, or yellow, whether they be of Jews or of Hellenes, whether they be inscribed on slabs of stone, or on boards of clay, or on strips of papyrus. Words and

thoughts live to the present day; they still move us and uplift us, even though we have already forgotten the names of those who spoke them. And we know that only the winged words live on, the words that are intelligible to the whole of mankind, that appeal to the whole of humanity, to the common human mind, the common heart.

We know the vast power of the English word. We know what a marvellous contribution the English writers have made to the life not of England alone, but to that of the whole world, the whole humanity. It is with a feeling of longstanding affection and veneration that we turn to the ancient book, called “England," whose pages never grow yellow, whose letters are never effaced, whose thoughts never become dim, whose new chapters bear witness to the fact that the book is still being written, that new pages are still being added, and that these new pages are permeated with that same bright and powerful spirit of humanity that illumines and enlivens the pages of the past.

We feel proud because you have recognized the great individual worth of the Russian literature, and we are moved by your ardent expressions of sympathy and friendship. You scarcely know what Lord Byron was to us at the dawn of our literature, how our greatest poets, Poushkin and Lermontov, were swayed by him. You scarcely know to what an extent the Shakespearean Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark, has become a part of our literature, how near to us is Hamlet's tragedy.

We, too, pronounce the names of Copperfield and Snodgrass with a little difficulty, but the name of Dickens is as familiar to us and as near to our hearts as the names of some of our own writers.

We trust, and we even permit ourselves to hope, that our friendship will