One can readily imagine the painful kind of questions that will arise in the mind of an intelligent ally who realizes for the first time how great are the inventive and organizing talents of the Teuton, how unswerving his resolve, how tenacious he is of purpose, and how unconscious most of us still are of the need of bestirring ourselves to compete with him on terms of equality. The German's striving is one, but all-embracing. His means are countless, for they are restricted by no limitations. In his search for tools and agents he enters into human nature, but not in its entire compass; only into the baser parts, so that his estimate is often erroneous and his expectations are unfulfilled. But even when ample deduction has been made for these failures, the odds remaining in his favour are formidable, and will continue undiminished unless and until we realize our plight, shuffle off the cramping coils of conservatism, insularity and self-complacency and brace ourselves to the most strenuous, the most painful effort we have ever yet put forth. On our capacity to effect this inward change, rather than upon any diplomatic arrangements, depends the issue of the struggle which will begin when military and naval hostilities have come to an end. CHAPTER XX PROBLEMS OF THE FUTURE Plain though these facts are, the Entente nations, and in particular the British people, either ignore them wholly or misinterpret their purport. Hence we continue absorbed in the pursuit of interests, parochial and parliamentary, which though quite human, are utterly off the line of racial and imperial progress. We obstinately shut our eyes to the magnitude of the Sphinx question that confronts us, and we address ourselves to one--and that the least important--of its many facets, and content ourselves with tackling that. We descant upon the turpitude of the Teuton who from the regions of idealism in which Goethe, Herder and their contemporaries dwelt has sunk into shift, treason and murder, and we proclaim our faith in the ultimate triumph of right, justice and of the democracy in which alone they flourish. But this frame of mind, which moves us to identify ourselves with all that is best in humanity, if cultivated will prove fatal. It accustoms us to dangerous hallucinations. We assume that we are the chosen people, and we neglect the virtues which alone would justify our election. For generations we have been reaping and wasting, instead of ploughing and sowing. We have been living on our capital, nay, on our credit, and have long since overdrawn our account. Our successes in the past, sometimes the result of fortuitous circumstances, more often of the blunders of our rivals, inspire a presumptuous confidence in successes for the future and a conviction that come what may we are destined to muddle through. A special providence is watching over us--a cousin German to the Kaiser's "good old God." In truth we are