devastating another little country, though they have not destroyed
its army. On the other hand, during the past few months the Allied
gains on the Somme have included, among other items, a chain of
fortresses hitherto considered impregnable, four or five hundred
pieces of artillery, fourteen hundred machine-guns, and about
ninety-five thousand unwounded German prisoners. Moreover, the French
at Verdun have regained in a few weeks all the ground that the Crown
Prince wrested from them, at the price of half a million German
casualities, in the spring. German colonies have ceased to exist;
German foreign trade is dead; the German navy is cooped up in Kiel
harbour; and Germany is so short of men that she has resorted to
outrageous deportations from Belgium in order to obtain industrial
labour. On the other hand, our supply of munitions now, at the opening
of 1917, is double what it was six months ago, and our new armies are
not yet all in the field. The British Navy, despite all losses, has
increased enormously both in tonnage and personnel. So I don't think
we are fought to a standstill yet.

"Yes, you are right. All this bloodshed is dreadful. But
responsibility for bloodshed rests not with the people who end a war
but with the people who began it. As for discussing terms of peace
now, what terms _could_ be arranged which Germany could be relied upon
to observe a moment longer than suited her? Have you forgotten the
way the War was forced on the world by Prussian militarism? The trick
played on Russia over mobilization? The violation of Belgian
neutrality? Malines, Termonde, Louvain? The official raping in the
market-place at Liége? The _Lusitania_? Edith Cavell? The Zeppelin
murders? Chlorine gas? The deportations from Belgium and Lille?
Wittenburg typhus camp, where men were left to rot, without doctors,
or medicine, or bedding? How can one talk of "honourable peace" with