army could never have been fashioned in Germany out of volunteer
civilians, like our army on the Somme. That army has a little shaken the
faith of the Germans in their creed. Again I must quote one of our
soldiers: 'I don't say', he remarked, 'that our average can run rings
round their best; what I say is that our average is better than their
average, and our best is better than their best.' The Germans already
are uneasy about their creed and their system, but there is no escape
for them; they have sacrificed everything to it; they have impoverished
the mind and drilled the imagination of every German citizen, so that
Germany appears before the world with the body of a giant and the mind
of a dwarf; they have sacrificed themselves in millions that their creed
may prevail, and with their creed they must stand or fall. The State,
organized as absolute power, responsible to no one, with no duties to
its neighbour, and with only nominal duties to a strictly subordinate
God, has challenged the soul of man in its dearest possessions. We
cannot predict the course of military operations; but if we were not
sure of the ultimate issue of this great struggle, we should have no
sufficient motive for continuing to breathe. The State has challenged
the soul of man before now, and has always been defeated. A miserable
remnant of men and women, tied to stakes or starved in dungeons, have
before now shattered what seemed an omnipotent tyranny, because they
stood for the soul and were not prompted by vanity or self-regard. They
had great allies--

'Their friends were exultations, agonies,
And love, and man's unconquerable mind.'

If we are defeated we shall be defeated not by German strength but by
our own weakness. The worst enemy of the martyr is doubt and the divided
mind, which suggests the question, 'Is it, after all, worth while?' We