When in doubt whether it was worth while to make an effort for some object of no immediate interest to the Fatherland the German invariably decided that the thing should be done. "You never can tell," he argued, "when or how it may prove useful." For years one firm of motor-car makers turned out vehicles with holes, the object of which no one could guess until the needs of the war revealed them as receptacles for light machine-guns. Nearly two years of an unparalleled struggle between certain isolated forces of the Allies and all the combined resources of the Teutons ought to banish the notion that the results achieved are the fruits only of Germany's military and naval efficiency. In truth, the adequacy of her military and naval forces constitutes but an integral part of a much vaster system. It has hitherto been the fashion among British and French writers to dwell exclusively on the comprehensiveness of the measures adopted by the Germans to fashion their land and sea defences into destructive implements of enormous striking power and scientific precision. But the German conception of the enterprise was immeasurably more grandiose. It included every means of offence and defence actually available or yet to be devised, and testifies to a grasp of the nature of the problem which, so far as one can judge, has not even yet been attained outside the Fatherland. As the present situation and its coming developments present themselves as practical corollaries of causes which the leaders of Germany rendered operative, it may not be amiss to describe these briefly.