Few careful students of European politics will now deny that the struggle between the forces for which Teutonism stands and those on which the social ordering of the rest of Europe is based was inaugurated long ago, that the ground was then cleared for the new politico-social structure, or that the dissolution of our "effete, drowsy States, saturated with wealth and honeycombed with hypocrisies," was carefully planned and taken in hand with scientific precision. It is equally clear, to those who have eyes to see, that the present clash of nations, despite its appalling effects on civilization, is but an acuter phase of that campaign, a series of incidents in a mighty struggle which neither began in July 1914 nor will end with the close of hostilities, but will rage on for years to come in less sanguinary but more decisive forms. For the future peace--whatever its terms--which will silence the cannon's boom, will but transfer the war theatre without ending the war. The methods will be changed from military to economic. But only the weapons will be different; the military discipline, the callous indifference to the dictates of human and divine law, the utter absence of scruple will continue to characterize the tactics of our enemy, who will then have a wider scope for his activities than the battlefield can offer. The German has no match among the allied nations in the regions of the new diplomacy, trade, industry, applied science, insidious journalism and vast organization. He is incomparably better equipped than they, and owing to his amorality has none of those obstacles to contend with which so often confront them with scruples and check their advance. And during the progress of the present war the Teutons are making ready for that economico-political duel which will, they hope, give them the decisive superiority for which they had vainly hoped from the war. That hope, if their experience of the past thirty years be a fair indication, is by no means groundless. Not to realize these facts to-day is to play into the hands of our enemies, as we have been steadfastly doing during the past thirty years. The British and their allies are being overcome less by German skill and cleverness than by their own sluggishness, narrowness of outlook and love of ease. As the German professor, whose utterances I have already quoted, tersely put it: "My confidence is founded above all else on our enemies' incapacity for organization." In truth, it is not inborn incapacity to which we owe our unquestioned inferiority, but to the atrophy of will-power which is one of the consequences of years of egotism, overweening confidence, self-indulgence and the loss of an inspiring social faith.