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EIGHTH SERIES
VOL. VIII

No. 3826 November 3, 1917

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ROM BEGINNING VOL. CCXCV

CONTENTS

I. Counting the Cost. By Dr. E. J. Dillon FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW 259

II. The Three European Settlements.

Sir John Macdonell

III. Christina's Son. Book V.

By

CONTEMPORARY REVIEW 272

Chapters IV

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COUNTING THE COST.

Like the son of Kish, who, going out to seek his father's asses, found a crown, the belligerent peoples who sallied forth three years ago to wage war on each other for the heritage of their forbears-principle, sway, trade, or land-are slowly awakening to the fact that all this time they have been compassing ends of quite another order and of varied worth. Doubtless some of these are potential gains and arouse dilating emotions, but, one and all, they lie far beyond the bounds of what was intended. And the general outcome is that instead of crushing the enemy and winning the stakes, each of the warwaging peoples has been pulling down the pillars of the established politicosocial fabric and rendering life on the old lines henceforth impossible. ready they are starting in new directions and they have to push forward over untrodden ways to their appointed destinies. A measure of the distance traversed in the ethical direction may be had by taking stock of how human life is being simplified and spiritualized, manhood constrained by will and circumstance towards its ideal type and linked the while more closely with its kind throughout the globe. Something, too, is being missed and yearned for, rather than actually created, to which one might aptly give the name of international conscience.

Al

Some of the many tentative improvisations rigged out under stress of transient necessity will, I believe, in time grow into gigantic institutions, the grain of mustard-seed becoming a majestic tree, in the branches whereof the birds of the air may come and lodge. For instance, effective organization for the adequate supply and distribution of foodstuffs and raw ma

terials among a population of seventy millions would have seemed impossible to create had it been mooted before the war. Yet it was improvised in a twinkling. Now that and kindred contrivances may one day be extended over the globe as race-ennobling instruments for the lopping off of dry branches, the whetting of the deeper instincts, the raising of man to the highest reaches of moral attainment -in a word, for the sifting and selection of the fittest. Odd though it may sound, the improvement of the race, the welding of its fragments into a compacted, rhythmically-working organism is, to my thinking, the remote but accessible goal towards which the world is being carried by an irresistible undercurrent of tendency.

The immediate goals of the struggling peoples and the relative position of each group to the other, after three years of heroic effort, are not yet sharply defined nor even wholly disengaged from the reeking fog of war. A superficial observer might well fancy that each side is firmly convinced that, come what may, it cannot be utterly beaten by the adversary. Nay, each one seems to harbor a hope that, circumstance favoring, it will force the other to sue for peace, the Teutons relying on their submarines and the break-up of the Coalition, and the Entente putting its trust in the effects of slow attrition. But a closer examination reveals a general shifting of the standpoints among other noteworthy changes. As the respective timetables have been withdrawn by the Governments, and no date fixed for the decision, faith in many quarters has become weak and wavering, while in some it has wholly ebbed away. And after three years of Titanic destructiveness no seer can foretell

long the struggle must yet go on if the issue be left to the operation of the military, naval, and economic forces engaged.

Radical though the changes are which certain decisive elements of the struggle have undergone, they have been so rapid and unmarked that the average man has not yet perceived their bearings and is hardly conscious of their existence. And yet it is plain enough to the close observer that neither the war-waging entities, their aims and motives, nor even their means of tackling the adversary, to say nothing of their opportunities, are today what they were in the autumn of 1914. Then the belligerents were entire nations; today some are but sections of the population, whose right to speak and act for the whole community may be questioned, as, for example, Austria.

with any approach to accuracy how favors the prosecution of the war until victory is assured, others harbor misgivings about its outcome, whereas unanimity and single-mindedness characterized each of the combatant nations at the outset. Belief in final victory, not only as a thing within reach, but even as an object to be desired, is no longer shared by all the belligerents or by all classes of each nation. Say what one may, the consummation desired by Russia is certainly not identical with that for which Italy or France is fighting, and yet all the Entente Powers desire to see the Teutons ousted from France and Belgium. What the Russians are clamoring for is peace without annexations of any kind, under any pretext, or any other name, whereas the Italians want to protect Albania and to effect several territorial changes which the Slavs are unanimous in deprecating. Again, the Allied Governments proclaim to the world that victory is awaiting us at the end of our next sustained effort, while considerable sections of their peoples, which once gave credence to similar assurances, now hold that the politicomilitary struggle, conducted on present lines, must of necessity end in disastrous loss. Although doubt or hesitation in a fateful contest like the present is paralyzing, it is spreading in Austria, Russia, and elsewhere. And those who dread that the sacrifices which the people are making may be vain are tormenting themselves with painful questions. That is the attitude of many today, an attitude of misgiving, apprehension, and pain, far removed from the temper that engenders enthusiasm, inspires perseverance, and ensures final success. But the armies are still heroic and the Governments undaunted.

Three years ago each side included territorial aggrandizement in its program, and for at least one that was a leading motive; today all States austerely repudiate annexations and will be satisfied with "reparation" for the past and "guarantees" for the future if allowed to define and realize these. Three years ago each group hoped to crush the other; since then they have banished from their thoughts such inhuman designs. Unanimously now, while killing off each other's armies, they seek to forge bonds of fraternal union for the joining of all nations and peoples, and they differ among themselves only in the material of the bonds, in the tenseness with which they would draw them, and in the degree to which they distrust and dislike each other and merit each other's distrust and dislike. Truly it is a puzzling spectacle.

In every belligerent nation there are at present two or more currents striving for the mastery, one of which

In all the belligerent countries bitter disillusions, caused by the results of childish optimism coupled with gross

mismanagement on the part of their leaders, contributed to shake the confidence of the masses. The enemy, better led and more thoroughly disciplined than the Allies, has suffered less and recovered more quickly. True, even his warlord and generals uttered boastful promises which they were unable to redeem, and the result was mild and widespread dejection. For alike in strategy and in statesmanship the Germans made great and fateful blunders, but hardly more than the usual percentage committed in every war. And in this economy of error lies one of the sources of their present superior position. The struggle that was to have ended for them before the autumn leaves fell in 1914 has gone on for three years, without bringing them the victory that they were to have celebrated in Paris. And all that the most sanguine Teuton can now hope for at the end of it is a compromise. But he draws comfort from the thought that that compromise will contain all the elements of success and bring him, slowly but unfailingly, to the goal of his desires. Hence he holds his ground steadfastly, as responsive as ever to the call of patriotic duty.

The Allies began the war with a nobler cause, greater diplomatic odds in their favor, and vaster potential resources than their adversaries. With average insight, decision, and thoroughness they might have worsted the enemy and ended the struggle long since. It is believable, for instance, that the blockade, if handled with skill and firmness at the opening of the war, would have hindered the victualing of the hostile armies in the field and forced the Teutons to their knees. The ease with which the cooperation of the Balkan States could have been secured was also a trump card that might have brought the wished-for decision had it been played

at the right moment and in the right way. But the well-intentioned authorities at the head of Entente affairs lacked positive knowledge of the war factors and were unconscious of their ignorance. In their hands the Near East became a vast burial-ground for the manhood of the Empire, an enduring monument of a blend of qualities which cannot be too soon extirpated.

The first political problem tackled by the belligerents was the enlistment on their side of the most important nations of Southeastern Europe. To the Allies, who, for a while, held the key to the wished-for solution, the task was relatively easy. For the Germans it bristled with difficulties. Yet it was these who surmounted the hindrances and reached the goal. For the Teutons have an inveterate habit of trying to see things as they are and of tackling them congruously with the law of cause and effect, whereas the Allied Governments are too often self-complacent theorists who blithely seek to check a movement of tidal magnitude by means of insular traditions, party contrivances, and even by such magic formulas as the invocation of God's blessing on the process of "muddling through." Into the fiercest struggle on record they entered as lightly as though it were a game of cricket or football, misreading the task, overestimating their own powers, underrating those of their adversaries, and setting themselves problems which would be insoluble, even were their estimates correct. And at some of these problems they are still working hopefully, after the blighting experience of three years.

Destiny aimed two sinister strokes at the Entente; once when, bringing the submarines into action it narrowed the rôle of our great battleships portentously, and then, when it transformed the great Russian bogatyr who was smiting the Teutons into a

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