THE

CANADIAN ANNUAL REVIEW

OF

PUBLIC AFFAIRS

Environment
of the
World-War.

THE WORLD-WAR IN 1917

During this year the great world-struggle conProgress and tinued, with infinite variations of success and failure, of achievement and endurance, amongst the nations and interests concerned. It ended with the war-map of Europe and the East largely favourable to the Teuton Allies; with the oceans and commerce of the world fretted but not dominated by the German submarine; with a restless undercurrent of thought and feeling amongst the peoples of the world which culminated in the volcanic eruption of Russian anarchy; with a blood-testing of democratic government which showed a determined Britain, a wonderful France, an Italy of mingled weakness and power, a United States which had, finally, found itself; with a clear revelation, also, of the greatness of autocracy as the wielder of organized warfare and the inherent weakness of democracies in admitting the control or excessive influence of Pacificism and individualism.

It was a year of brilliant but somewhat ineffective triumphs for the British Allies on the Western front, a year of striking British victories in the East, and of Italian ebb and flow in the West; a year of disaster in the military collapse of Russia and of hope in the entry of the United States upon the blood-stained European arena; a year of heavy and ever-growing financial burdens for all the Powers, with the balance in favour of the Entente countries, who still, in the cases of Britain, France and the United States, maintained their commerce and credit; a year of unceasing and increasing casualties amongst the 20,000,000 troops fighting in everwidening areas during these months of struggle; a year of bitter, individual grief in many countries, of untold, indescribable suffering amongst conquered peoples, of the continued barbarism in methods or policy of German troops and German governors; a year of varied revelations as to German plots in the turned-over pages of current history around the world; a year of restricted production and menacing famine in food supplies, of high prices and great war profits,

of heavy taxation and enormous national borrowings; a year of intense determination amongst French soldiers, of cheerful confidence in British troops, of sullen doggedness amongst the Germans and war-weariness in Austrian ranks, of disintegration, deception and disruption in immense Russian armies, of heroic action and feverish error amongst the Italians; a year in which every noble element in human nature found some expression somewhere and in which every vile or vicious trait in the life-structure of mankind found force and effect.

In this period the world experimented in all kinds of action and policy, discarded old practices and principles as a child does its worn-out toys, built up new structures of thought in a day which, under former conditions, would have needed a century for evolution, twisted and manipulated the war strategy and tactics of the past to suit terrors of high explosives, of flaming or poison gases, of monstrous Tanks, of bombs from the skies and torpedoes from under the seas. Mechanical transport, whether within the Teuton lines or on the Western Allied front, in Mesopotamia or Palestine, showed marvels of efficiency, while science worked inconspicuous but wonderful miracles in curative operation and the saving of life, in sanitary arrangements and inoculation against disease, as well as in the perfecting of varied means of death and of injury to an enemy. The social life of almost every country was in a state of flux, into the melting-pot went many national ideals, practices and prejudices, the selfish individualism of the day was shaken though not eliminated, self-sacrifice from the rarest of the virtues became a most common one, class distinction was based more and more upon public service while private morals were dealt with by public legislation and hammered out upon the anvil of war-time restrictions. Religion came to its own in some troubled quarters of the world even though, at times, the difficulties of realizing Christian principles amid the world-wide dominance of the cruellest war had a negative effect. Women in the Allied countries reached new standards of sacrifice, labour, efficiency, and obtained a political power undreamed of before this vast upheaval of elemental forces. The British Empire grew more and more into a close-knit Commonwealth of nations, while international friendships, such as those of Britain and France and the United States, found new and bloodknit spheres of sentiment and action.

Nine-tenths of the world's population, or 1,526 millions, were at war; half the Governments of the earth, with 1,370 million people, had engaged in the struggle against the German Allies with their 156,000,000 subjects; other States, with 22,000,000 of a population, had broken off relations with the Teutons, while the small neutral States only constituted 144,000,000 of people all-told. The disproportion of forces was enormous, yet back of the Germans were many elements making for possible conquest and worldpower. They had a central geographical situation; a definite, determined, clear-cut ambition and policy which had been formulated and developed through half a century, by an autocratic government, to a trained and submissive people; a systematic organization

for war with a great army ready to strike and able to stand the buffets of fate to a degree which Napoleon himself would have thought superb; a splendid organization of resources, business, labour, industry, finance and man-power; a method of popular repression which might have explosive qualities inherent in its nature, but which, while it lasted, multiplied many times the striking power of its soldiers; a science which, over a long term of years, had turned every human capacity and mental power of its people into producing engines of war, machinery for destruction, weapons of death and deviltry; a transportation system unique in the operations of war and which, practically, doubled the effectiveness of the armies while expanding, as the conquered or affiliated regions expanded, from Berlin to Constantinople and tentatively out toward Bagdad and the Orient; a leadership of trained generals which gradually usurped or acquired complete and unified control over all the forces of its Allies and welded them into one great weapon for offensive war; a ruler who had held, during these war-years of tremendous national effort, the loyalty of his people and who, however vast the crime which caused and precipitated the War, possessed much ability and an obviously keen knowledge of world conditions, public thought and military strategy.

Against this mighty engine of aggressive power were the infinitely greater apparent forces of Great Britain and her Allies. At the beginning of the War their resources approximated $500,000,000,000 of national wealth, compared with an estimated $100,000,000,000 for the Teuton Allies, an area of 40,000,000 square miles compared with 3,000,000, and Pig-iron production-a back-bone of wartotalling 57,000,000 gross tons against 16,000,000, a wheat production of 3,000 million bushels against 400 millions. But during the ensuing years of war the mines and wealth and industries of Belgium and Northern France, the agricultural and mineral resources of Roumania, the forests and industries of Poland, the agricultural wealth of Courland and Lithuania, passed into German hands and were organized with characteristic completeness and ruthless skill. Meanwhile, the wealth of the Entente Allies was about the only thing organized with the same care as was shown in Germany; individual patriotism, it is true, did vast service in the various British countries but nowhere was man-power, industry and general strength adequately developed until in 1917 the voluntary system, by pure force of external compulsion, was replaced by a sort of subdued, socialistic autocracy.

The chaotic mass of populations such as China and India, the African Colonies and finally Russia-or about 1,000 millions of the great Alliance were practically unarmed, unorganized and comparatively ineffective. They were, in part, utilized for labour purposes and, to an also restricted extent, for industry, but this was counter-acted by the force of German organization of conquered populations into practical slave labour. Hence, by the close of 1917, the preponderance of population on the part of Britain's Allies was more sentimental than effective; where it was organized the Submarine campaign had a disintegrating influence. The United