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cations, but have been able to exploit this advantage to its fullest extent because they have from the first co-ordinated strategy and policy. They have always had a war plan- and indeed a war plan with several alternatives and "second-bests." The Allies as a whole have never had a plan at all, and even at this moment are only very slowly evolving one. It is the consciousness of the fact that we are at length beginning to learn from our mistakes and to prepare for a really concentric attack, based upon unity of aim, that is one of Germany's main reasons for desiring peace while her armies are yet at the top of their effort. Individual initiative has always been the glory of the Brtish race; but the days of Wolfe and Clive are in the past. To-day initiative is more needed than ever, but it must be disciplined in a sense hitherto unrealised, and must know how to take full advantage of all those forces upon which modern science and organisation compel soldier and statesman alike to rely.

The Allies, we repeat, have need of a clear political plan. Without this there can be no such thing as strategic victory, for strategy is merely policy translated into terms of war. "The destruction of Prussian Militarism" or "the crushing of Germany" are mere rhetorical phrases far too vague to deserve the title of a programme. They can only satisfy the type of mind which regards the present war as a death grapple between two wild animals, one of which must scratch out the other's eyes. The real problem at stake is the final emancipation of Europe as a whole from those feudal con- ceptions which have lingered in so many quarters—from the right of dynasties to prescribe the fate of peoples, from the belief in brute force as the dominant factor in human pro- gress, from the pacifist illusion that the wealth of nations merely consists in financial credit and from the veiled designs of capital upon the liberties of labour. The German Will to Power can only be met on the part of the Allies by the Will to a New Europe. The determining factor in re- construction will be the fate of Austria-Hungary, the Balkans. and Turkey, for it is in these countries that the stakes lie. So long as they remain the blind instruments of German policy and of German strategy—and the narrow castes which control their destinies can never be detached voluntarily from an alliance which is the very basis of their continuance in power—so long will Germany dominate the continent.