his magnanimity and generosity, the terms of peace would probably be less humiliating than if it sent an unequal army and navy against the overpowering resources of nations, which have made their preparations for war a matter of life and death.

The art of war has been revolutionized within the last hundred years. Danton could say at the beginning of the French Revolution to arouse the people: "Dare! again dare! and evermore dare!” The Republican hosts of France arose in that spirit, and when war was a matter of man to man and foe saw the face of foe, it was quite possible, from the mere spirit of "daring" to use Danton's phrase, to carry it through successfully. Today war is a matter of mechanics, chemistry, transportation, and organization. Thus we would have to paraphrase the words of Danton and say, "Organize, and again organize, and evermore organize," because today an army, that lacks the mechanics of war, is worse than no army at all.

Mr. William J. Bryan, the most noted of the extreme pacifists, has deprecated the necessity for any preparation, and is quoted as suggesting that, if America were attacked, a million men would spring to arms between sunrise and sunset. He adds that the money that the nation would spend

in increasing its army could more profitably build twelve great roads from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

Magnificent idea! It would be along those very roads that the invader would march to the very heart of our country. Said Solomon: "Seest thou a man who is hasty in his words? There is more

hope in a fool than in him."

A nation cannot improvise an army after a declaration of war, any more than, if an epidemic were raging, it could improvise a medical staff, or, if a great conflagration should visit a city, improvise a fire department.

If there is one thing that the last eighteen months have demonstrated, it is the unquenchable valour and magnificent endurance of France. The French people, in 1870, were as brave as they are today, but they were not prepared. Their system of mobilization was so imperfect that in some instances its soldiers travelled several hundred miles in one direction to receive their equipment and then returned to join their regiments twenty miles from where they started. At the outbreak of the war, when the Minister of War was asked by Napoleon the Third whether everything was ready, the former replied that if the war lasted a whole year, the French Army would not need so much as a gaiter button.

Three weeks after the declaration of war, out of three hundred and thirty thousand soldiers on paper, only two hundred thousand actually mobilized. The reserves had had only one month's training and, in consequence, did not know the use of the new type of rifle that had been introduced. Many brigades and divisions did not know where their commanders were and many commanders did not know where their divisions were. Supplies were wholly lacking. "We need everything," said General Failly. "We are in want of everything," echoed Bazaine. Thirty-eight bakers were sent to feed one hundred and thirty thousand men. Maps of Germany were in abundance, but not a single map of France. The General Staff did not even have a plan. Bazaine afterwards said that if there was a plan, he had not learned of it when he surrendered.

The result was the most terrible débâcle in history. Paris fell, notwithstanding the valour of its people and not until they had literally fed upon the dogs in the streets, but nothing could stand against the equal valour and superbly developed organization of a people, who knew so exactly what they were to do that the story is familiar of the elder von Moltke, who, after the war had been

declared, simply pointed to a pigeonhole, containing a plan of campaign prepared years before, and then resumed his game of solitaire. This is probably an exaggeration, but the underlying idea is symptomatic. Had there been a similar unpreparedness in France in 1914 the result would have been the same, without respect to the justice of its cause.

The author reached Paris on the night of July 31st, 1914, and the next night mobilization was declared. The declaration of war was followed in France as in Germany, by a magnificent demonstration of the power of an efficient people.

As a result, within the fourteen days which Germany and France allowed for purposes of mobilization, Germany had in all probability over two millions of trained and equipped soldiers in the field, nearly a million of whom were poured through Belgium, while France had probably a million and a half equally efficient soldiers in arms. If America, with its 35,000 mobile soldiers and its national guard of 120,000 on paper, with its coast defences lacking powder for even a day's firing, were confronted with the trained and equipped soldiers of either France or Germany, it might again suffer the terrible humili

ation that its Capital suffered over one hundred years ago when the trained veterans of Wellington marched from the Chesapeake to the Capital in a few days and burned its public buildings to ashes with a loss of only sixty-four lives.

The dreadful prolongation of the present war, with its unprecedented toll of human life, is the tragedy of military unpreparedness, for France, England, and Russia were not fully prepared as compared with Germany to meet the strenuous necessities of this titanic conflict, and even Germany greatly miscalculated the tremendous drain which a prolonged war would make upon its material resources.

The war has had few greater tragedies than the dreadful disaster which befell the Russian Army, after its victorious march through Galicia and across the Carpathians, when it was driven back and decimated because of its lack of equipment. Russia's inability to furnish its soldiers with even a sufficient number of small arms cost it at least a million soldiers.

England, too, was not ready, and its small but splendid expeditionary force was quickly swallowed up in the gigantic struggle, for which its forces, however brave, were painfully inadequate.