led one to suppose: and so had been lured on.

It now looks to me as if they are playing for one of two alternatives.
If Von Below can get round their right flank he will try a last
envelopment: if that flank falls back far enough to uncover Petrograd,
he will make a dash for P. But all that will mean locking up even
bigger forces in the East. Indeed it seems so reckless that I can only
account for it by supposing either that they are confident of rushing
Petrograd and paralysing Russia within a few weeks: or that they are
in a desperate plight and know it.

As for the future, I think it would be a mistake to expect this war to
produce a revolution in human nature and equally wrong to think
nothing has been achieved if it doesn't. What I do hope is that it
will mark a distinct stage towards a more Christian conception of
international relations. I'm afraid that for a long time to come there
will be those who will want to wage war and will have to be crushed
with their own weapons. But I think this insane and devilish cult of
war will be a thing of the past. War will only remain as an unpleasant
means to an end. The next stage will be, one hopes, the gradual
realisation that the ends for which one wages war are generally
selfish: and anyway that law is preferable to force as a method of
settling disputes. As to whether National ideals can be Christian
ideals, in the strict sense they can't very well: because so large a
part of the Christian ideal lies in self-suppression and self-denial
which of course can only find its worth in individual conduct and its
meaning in the belief that this life is but a preparation for a future
life: whereas National life is a thing of this world and therefore the
law of its being must be self-development and self-interest. The
Prussians interpret this crudely as mere self-assertion and the will