390 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



spying on their hosts; and, it is said, even arranged to make 

 gun-emplacements and stations for wireless-telegraphy in the 

 territories of friendly peoples by whom her citizens had been 

 always welcomed and often enriched. There is clear evidence 

 that she had fixed the hour for the present outbreak long before 

 it occurred and that she used the murder of the Austrian 

 Archduke merely as a plausible excuse. Like a bandit she 

 prepared the secret dagger while she avowed friendship. It is 

 a false statement that nations, unlike individuals, cannot be 

 indicted for evil deeds — and in fact there is a nation now 

 existing which has suffered from such an indictment for cen- 

 turies ; but the Germans have been so stupid as not to perceive 

 the stigma which their actions have placed and will place upon 

 their race for a century to come. And, however evil their inten- 

 tions were, their deeds have been still more so. Their first action 

 in the war was to infringe the neutrality of two small states — 

 which they themselves had guaranteed ; and still worse than 

 that, when one of these states resisted, they crushed it by un- 

 speakable barbarities. The whole picture is one which offends 

 every notion of virtue, among individuals and between states 

 alike. 



But have not any of the other states been to blame ? There 

 are sins of omission as well as those of commission. The secret 

 preparations of Germany have been perceived for several 

 decades by every one capable of seeing and thinking. Every 

 soldier agrees that if Britain had possessed an army of a 

 million trained soldiers, or even half a million, which she 

 could have dispatched to the Continent within a few weeks 

 after the outbreak of hostilities, the present war would probably 

 never have occurred (at least as regards Britain, because Ger- 

 many would scarcely have dared to bring us upon her back 

 while she was engaged with France and Russia). Certainly 

 she would not have dared to infringe the neutrality of Belgium, 

 if we could have thrown such a force into it or upon the neigh- 

 bouring shores of France. But our statesmen refused to main- 

 tain such an army, though they did not hesitate to guarantee the 

 independence of Belgium without preparing the means by 

 which they could support that guarantee. They were like a 

 man who backs a friend's bill, but does not possess the money to 

 enable him to do so — a dishonest action. When war broke out, 

 all we could do was to dispatch less than a hundred thousand 



