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X. The Uncle on Leave. By W. M. Letts WESTMINSTER GAZETTE

XII. A Camouflage Peace

XIII. Tennyson Twenty-five Years After. By

F. J. C. Hearnshaw .

497

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FOR SIX DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, THE LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage, to any part of the United States. To Canada the postage is 50 cents per annum.

Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office or express money order if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks express and money orders should be made payable to the order of THE LIVING AGE CO.

Single Copies of THE LIVING AGE, 15 cents

POWER of

ELLA WHIT

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THE SUBMARINE WAR.

The submarine campaign is proving the latest, though it may not prove the last, of the many miscalculations of the Germans-proud in pre-war days of nothing more than the perfection of their naval and military staff-work, the industry of their secret and other agents abroad in collecting information as bases of action, and the care exhibited in weighing the chances of success of every venture, the most thorough exploration of the foundations of future policy being undertaken.

What a record of folly and failure confronts the ambitious, boastful, overbearing Germans, who were convinced three years ago that they were supermen, rightful heirs to the legacies of past centuries.* First, the faithlessness of the Belgians to their Sovereign and country was airily assumed; then it was thought that the British Government, terrorized by the size and efficiency of the German Navy,† would hesitate to intervene, it being concluded that the tearing up of "the scrap of paper" would be met only with a formal protest; later on, it was

We

*The modern world owes to us Germans pretty well everything in the way of great achievements that it has to show. are undoubtedly the best warrior people in the world. We are the most accomplished people in all domains of science and fine art. Ours is the future, for we are the young."-(Bley, "Weltstellung des Deutschthums.")

†The naval debates in Parliament from 1909 onwards, when the growing menace of German sea-power was emphasized by speakers of all parties and it was suggested that the British Fleet might not be able to hold its own against the Navy of Germany, led the Kaiser and his Ministers to believe in 1914 that they had attained the end foreshadowed in the Memorandum of the Navy Act of 1900. It was therein declared: "Germany must have a battle fleet so strong that even for the adversary with the greatest seapower a war against it would involve such dangers as to imperil his position in the world." Official Germany was convinced in August, 1914, that the German Fleet's threat would keep Britain from intervening in a European struggle, and after France had been crushed and peace enforced on Russia, German naval expansion was to continue until the time was ripe for realizing the Kaiser's ambition-"the trident must be in our hands."

confidently declared that, in any event, France would be trampled under foot a matter of six weeks only-before the "contemptible" British Army or the British Fleet could affect the issue of the war, and that the way would thus be cleared for a favorable peace with the Russians as a preliminary to the settling of accounts with the British people and the dismemberment of the Empire; it was believed to the last moment that German threats would check Italy's determination to join in the struggle; Roumania was afterwards to be bought off with gold and promises; an intrigue of vast proportions was subsequently engineered in the hope of divorcing Russia from her Allies; threats of outrage and the fostering of revolution in Mexico were to keep the United States out of the European struggle, Japan at length being put forward, without her consent, as Mexico's ally in war against America. That is a brief catalogue of the miscalculations of Germany's Ministers, diplomatists, soldiers, and sailors, who plumed themselves on their skill in statecraft as a complementary agent to militarism and navalism, the instruments of an absolute monarchy.

To this record of failure, piracy, and all the hopes that resided in it, must be added. It was to be a short and decisive campaign, like the campaign planned on land in 1914. This country's sea communications were to be severed by what the Kaiser would describe as "a hammer blow"; the British armies on the various fronts, short of supplies, were to be demobilized by hunger and want of waterborne munitions; the civil population of these islands, depending on ships for four out of every five loaves, was to be brought to the verge of starva

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