phenomenal fashion, and German spies were discovering on Russia's infinite boundaries little elevations for concrete foundations to be built for Germany's mortars, Germany's correspondents and diplomats were thoughtlessly and stupidly passing by the growth of Russia's political consciousness. At the beginning of the war German diplomacy assured the Kaiser that the Russian people were on the eve of a revolution, and that the Russian intellectuals were ready to support the Prussian King.

In the last six months Germany has lived through, as far as disillusionment and sobering up is concerned, sixty years. In this period of time she has, among other things, rediscovered the power of Russia, "buried" by her strategists after the capture of our fortresses. It is difficult to find out when and how this metamorphosis regarding Russia took place. There were no public announcements or explanations about it. Neither the General Staff nor the newspapers have refuted their previous fanfaronades. And, though confidence in ultimate victory has remained in Germany, it is not what it used to be, being colored in a different dye. Silently but resolutely Germany has acknowledged the indestructibility of Russia's military power, and to the Teutons the Russian Army has again become a portentous factor. Russia's material power is depressing Teutonic confidence. And contemporaneously with it there appears the relief of another terrible Russian power-the Russian spirit.

Germany has not yet penetrated the secret of Russia's political life, of her political ideals. The conflicts among these are still puzzles to her. Germany

eagerly seizes the scandalous in our political life and spreads that diligently, supporting and justifying her former stupidity. The Germans are still being brought up in the doctrine that Russia is a barbarous country, unripe for citizenship. But at the same time they are being prepared for surprises by some of her leaders, who, without spending much time on investigations and study, have been able, with their characteristic German practicality, to sense our secret.

Thus we witness as silent and abrupt a change in Germany's attitude toward our body politic as toward our front. She now acknowledges our second elemental force-the Duma. This recognition has become so general that her official organ was compelled recently to formulate it. The famous article in the Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, denying Wilhelm's leanings toward the Russian reactionary forces, was only the expression of Germany's newest view of political Russia. Our rights to citizenship are now recognized, and the Duma is now held to be the personification of these rights and of our political maturity. Official Germany has finally come to the conviction that the voice of the Russian people can be heard only in the Duma, that there and thence flow all the currents of our spiritual life. Henceher convulsive attempts at a separate peace.

The Russian Government can either strengthen or weaken this conviction. Whatever may happen in the Duma, the fact of its existence alone is a terror to our enemy. The army and the Duma are the Russian Scylla and Charybdis. It is inconceivable how the German ship could pass through them.

W

WHEN the history of the war can be written with all documents available, no careful student of the situation will be surprised if the

total German losses of every kind up to the end of 1915 prove close on four millions.

We have now established all the four categories of absolute permanent loss. The first category arrived at by the calculation already presented to my reader gives us one million dead. The second category gives us about a quarter of a million prisoners. The third category, the permanently disabled wounded, gives us 1,600,000. The fourth category, the permanently disabled from sickness, gives us 600,000. We should have altogether from these categories just under three million-2,850,000 men.

Then, to this number which is the minimum permanent dead loss, what have we to add for the wounded and sick that will ultimately return, but are still in hospitals or in convalescence?

There again we have the analogy of the allied statistics to guide us. The average period in hospital and convalescence is four months. The admissions to hospitals per month, counting those only who will ultimately emerge cured and counting sick and wounded together, cannot possibly, for an army of the Ger

man numbers, be less than 100,000. We have, therefore, to add to our total a floating balance of 400,000, and we bring to the end of the year an irreducible minimum off the strength of three and a quarter millions.

A man making out the very best case for German losses, pleading as a German would plead to some neutral power to prove the continued resources of his armies, could not by any form of argument whatever get the losses below three and a quarter millions up to Dec. 31, 1915.

There is no object in making calculations of this sort save the discovery of the truth.

A

CLOSER inquiry into what is wrong with the war shows that nearly every single thing that is wrong has its close analogue in domestic politics. The war is mistakenly carried on with the precepts and practices of home government and home struggles, instead of on the wholly different principles and practices of foreign policy and international conflict. During the "British inefficiency" and "British decadence" agitation started after the Boer war, (not in Germany, as is pretended, but in England,) home politics and politicians were belabored in the full measure. The indictment contained love of humbug; catchword phrases, be

lief in bluff, in demonstrations, and in magic short cuts; reckless promise making; belief in the stupidity, perverted mentality, and factionism of opponents; make-believe that political defeats are victories; belief in one's own party's natural right to win. As these failings were common to all parties, they did not materially affect the balance of party power. The result is different when they are the chief intellectual weapons against foreign enemies whose intellects are differently armed.

A just measurement, consistently held to and acted on, of the qualities and quantities of opponents is essential to success in any struggle. In this war that principle is as flagrantly ignored as it is in home politics, and ignored precisely in the same way. It is amazing

that in the second year of war we have no consistent official conception of our enemies. True, there is endless characterization in talking and writing of Germans, Austrians, Turks, and Bulgarians; but, again, the practice is not to paint our enemies as they are, or even as, from the standpoint of high policy, it is desirable we should believe them to be. The practice is to blurt out the first thing that pleases listeners, according to their mood of overconfidence or anxiety, and in particular to interpret the enemy in terms of the particular contention or plea which is uppermost for the moment.

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Not only has the Cabinet no policy, but individual Ministers do not agree with themselves. In the same speeches, sometimes in consecutive sentences, the Germans are derided as corrupt, worthless, feeble, and misgoverned, and praised as terrible by virtue of an organization," a patriotism, and an energy which are reproaches to our miserable selves. When the war began, the Cabinet (that is, one of the hundred voices of its twenty members) proclaimed that the Kaiser is a lunatic. To prove this was cited, without verification, a fabricated war speech in every word differing from what the Kaiser did say, (I heard the speech myself, and it was painfully sane.) As the Kaiser was both mad and a despot who meddles everywhere, Englishmen were left to conclude that German strategy (like Napoleon's in Austrian eyes) would be mad. The Germans, the nation officially learned, would rejoice if we helped them to overthrow their mad despot. The Germans (to quote only Cabinet expressions) "hogs," "wild beasts," "" venomous reptiles"; they can accomplish in life nothing but slaughter; and even (so said one Minister) they cannot slaughter efficiently, for they kill more civilians than they kill enemy soldiers. Austria is "a ramshackle empire." The Germans do not know how to conduct a war; their "calculations one and all have been completely falsified "; on the day Hindenburg entered Warsaw-presumably by accident-the nation learned that the Germans had never succeeded in one of

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their plans. Naturally, with such official leading, the unwiser of the unofficial heads produced masterpieces; a prominent Baronet says that German commanders are chosen, not for their brains, but for their "ferocious appearances"; if shells batter Verdun, they are fired to gratify the Crown Prince's vanity, because the contemptible Germans are not influenced by the motives which govern the actions of intelligent belligerents.

The nation has been told in succession that money, resources, mechanism, and "superiority in munitions" are the secrets of success. The intellectual resource of millions, from Ministers to crossing sweepers, when faced with pessimism or criticism, is to say: "Yes, but this is a war of * * *," filling in the blank with anything but the right words: military superiority. The detached or neutral thinker is amazed to hear that this is a war of resources, with the implication that superior resources, automatically, and independently of their use, brings victory. *

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The propaganda that only shells are needed is good as incitement to shellmakers, but it is injurious in its effects on national thinking as to the real secrets of success. The Russian General, Radko-Dimitriyeff, told me on the Dunajec, shortly before the unlucky battle of Gorlice-Tarnow, that he had plenty of shells; and most Russian retreats, and many other retreats in the war, were not at all determined by shortness of shell. The munitions catch phrase keeps favor not merely because of its use in helping shell production. Of all catchwords it is most considerate to personages. The implication is that our inferiority in an impersonal thing like shell supply is an ugly, inevitable unfairness of nature; nobody is guilty; Ministers, organizers, Generals, are all worthy and genial; but shells, which of course were never heard of in other wars, failed in their duty. Probably the war can be won only by military means-by putting in the field better armies than the enemy's, led by better Generals. The last and only compelling catch phrase will be: "This is a war of war."

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