But, of course, there weighs against these hopes the possibility that the Allied Powers are too various in their nature, too biased, too feeble intellectually and imaginatively, to hold together and maintain any institution for co-operation.  The British Press may be too silly not to foster irritation and suspicion; we may get Carsonism on a larger scale trading on the resuscitation of dying hatreds; the British and Russian diplomatists may play annoying tricks upon one another by sheer force of habit.  There may be many troubles of that sort.  Even then I do not see that the hope of an ultimate world peace vanishes.  But it will be a Roman world peace, made in Germany, and there will have to be several more great wars before it is established.  Germany is too homogeneous yet to have begun the lesson of compromise and the renunciation of the dream of national conquest.  The Germans are a national, not an imperial people.  France has learnt that through suffering, and Britain and Russia because for two centuries they have been imperial and not national systems.  The German conception of world peace is as yet a conception of German ascendancy.  The Allied conception becomes perforce one of mutual toleration.

But I will not press this inquiry farther now.  It is, as I said at the beginning, a preliminary exploration of one of the great questions with which I propose to play in these articles.  The possibility I have sketched is the one that most commends itself to me as probable.  After a more detailed examination of the big operating forces at present working in the world, we may be in a position to revise these suggestions with a greater confidence and draw our net of probabilities a little tighter.

II.  THE END OF THE WAR[1]

The prophet who emerges with the most honour from this war is Bloch.  It must be fifteen or sixteen years ago since this gifted Pole made his forecast of the future.  Perhaps it is more, for the French translation of his book was certainly in existence before the Boer War.  His case was that war between antagonists of fairly equal equipment must end in a deadlock because of the continually increasing defensive efficiency of entrenched infantry.  This would give the defensive an advantage over the most brilliant strategy and over considerably superior numbers that would completely discourage all aggression.  He concluded that war was played out.

[Footnote 1:  This chapter was originally a newspaper article.  It was written in December, 1915, and published about the middle of January.  Some of it has passed from the quality of anticipation to achievement, but I do not see that it needs any material revision on that account.]