mention this amazing contention merely to show how imperfectly the issues raised by the present conflict were appreciated in the early days of the struggle. To-day we see the establishment of the British Army raised by Parliamentary sanction to 3,000,000 men without a single protest being uttered against a figure which, had it been even hinted at, a year ago would have been received with yells of derision. Yet, in spite of that vast number, I still ask "Are we doing enough?" In other words, looking calmly at the stupendous gravity of the issues involved, is there any further effort we could possibly make to shorten the duration of the war?
For eight months German agents, armed with German gold, have been industriously propagating, in France and in Russia, the theory that those countries were, in fact, pulling the chestnuts out of the fire for England. German agents are everywhere. We were represented as holding the comfortable view that our fleet was doing all that we could reasonably be called upon to undertake; that, secure behind our sea barriers, we were simply carrying on a policy of "business as usual" with the minimum of effort and loss and the maximum of gain through our principal competitors in the world's commerce being temporarily disabled. The object of this manœuvre was plain. Germany hoped to sow the seeds of jealousy and discord, and to thrust a wedge into the solid alliance against her. Now it is, to-day, beyond all question that, to some extent at least, this manœuvre was successful. A certain proportion of people in both France and Russia, perhaps, grew restive. In the best-informed circles it was, of course, fully recognised that Britain, with her small standing Army, could
