body. This is the condition which produces great strategical plans and
extreme energy in their execution. The Japanese forces are well
organised, armed, and equipped. They are intelligently led and follow
with intelligence.

"Of Russia there is hardly evidence to show that the cause for which she
is fighting has touched the imaginations or the feelings of more than a
small fraction of the population. It is the war of a bureaucracy, and
Russia may easily fail to develop either great leading, though her
officers are instructed, or intelligent following of the leaders by the
rank and file. But the Russian troops are brave and have always needed a
good deal of beating."

Substitute Great Britain for Russia and Germany for Japan in this
forecast, which has been proved true, and every word holds good except
two. We now know that Russia's policy was not deliberate; that her
Government bungled into the war without knowing what it was doing. In
just the same way British Governments have drifted blindly into the
present difficult relations with Germany. Those in England who would
push the country into a war with Germany are indeed not a bureaucracy,
they are merely a fraction of one of the parties, and do not represent
the mass of our people, who have no desire for such a war, and are so
little aware of its possibility that they have never even taken the
trouble to find out why it may come. A larger section of the other party
is steeped in the belief that force, violence, and war are wicked in
themselves, and ought therefore not to be thought about. It is a
prejudice which, unless removed, may ruin this country, and there is no
way of dissipating it except that of patient argument based upon
observation of the world we live in. That way I shall attempt to follow
in the next chapter.