munition workers, of long days spent in the great supply bases across the
Channel, or of motoring through the snowy roads of Normandy and Picardy, I
have naturally realised that effort far more vividly than ever before. It
seems to me--it must seem to any one who has seriously attempted to gauge
it--amazing, colossal. "What country has ever raised over sixty per cent
of its total recruitable strength, for service beyond the seas in a few
months?" asks one of our younger historians; and that a country not
invaded, protected by the sea, and by a supreme fleet; a country,
moreover, without any form of compulsory military service, in which
soldiering and the soldier have been rather unpopular than popular, a
country in love with peace, and with no intention or expectation of going
to war with any one?


II

For there we come to the root of everything--the _unpreparedness of
England_--and what it meant. It meant simply that as a nation we never
wished for war with Germany, and, as a nation, we never expected it. Our
Governments, of course, contained men who saw more or less plainly the
dangers ahead, and had spent years of effort in trying to avoid them. On
several occasions, during the last twenty years, as we all remember, a
wave of sudden anxiety as to German aims and intentions had spread through
the thinking portion of the nation--in connection with South Africa, with
Morocco, with the Balkans. But it had always died away again. We know now
that Germany was not yet ready! Meanwhile fruitless efforts were made by
successive English Governments to limit armaments, to promote arbitration,
and extend the scope of the Hague Tribunal. In vain. Germany would have
none of them. Year by year, in a world of peace her battle-navy grew. "For
what can it be intended but to attack England?" said the alarmist. But how