I do not speak of gains of territory, and prisoners, and booty.  It is true that we have taken from the Germans about a million square miles of land in Africa, where land is cheap.  We have taken more prisoners from them than they have taken from us, and we have whole parks of German artillery to set over against the battered and broken remnants of British field-guns which were exhibited in Berlin—­a monument to the immortal valour of the little old Army.  I am speaking rather of gains which cannot be counted as guns are counted, or measured as land is measured, but which are none the less real and important.

The Germans have achieved certain great material gains in this War, and they are fighting now to hold them.  If they fail to hold them, the Germany of the war-lords is ruined.  She will have to give up all her bloated ambitions, to purge and live cleanly, and painfully to reconstruct her prosperity on a quieter and sounder basis.  She will not do this until she is forced to it by defeat.  No doubt there are moderate and sensible men in Germany, as in other countries; but in Germany they are without influence, and can do nothing.  War is the national industry of Prussia; Prussia has knit together the several states of the larger Germany by means of war, and has promised them prosperity and power in the future, to be achieved by war.  You know the Prussian doctrine of war.  Every one now knows it.  According to that doctrine it is a foolish thing for a nation to wait till it is attacked.  It should carefully calculate its own strength and the strength of its neighbours, and, when it is ready, it should attack them, on any pretext, suddenly, without warning, and should take from them money and land.  When it has gained territory in this fashion, it should subject the population of the conquered territory to the strictest laws of military service, and so supply itself with an instrument for new and bolder aggression.  This is not only the German doctrine; it is the German practice.  In this way and no other modern Germany has been built up.  It is a huge new State, founded on force, cemented by fear, and financed on speculative gains to be derived from the great gamble of war.  You may have noticed that the German people have not been called on, as yet, to pay any considerable sum in taxation towards the expenses of this war.  Those expenses (that, at least, was the original idea) were to be borne wholly by the conquered enemy.  There are hundreds of thousands of Germans to-day who firmly believe that their war-lords will return in triumph from the stricken field, bringing with them the spoils of war, and scattering a largess of peace and plenty.