At last the British people have realised that compulsion to defend the country of their birth is no disgrace, and they have learned that it in no way threatens their personal liberty. The French and Dutch, to mention two countries famed for their love of independence and liberty, never have and never will consider it against their freedom to be compelled to learn how to defend themselves in the hour of need. An Englishman does not consider it a disgrace to be compelled to pay his rates and taxes; why should it be regarded as anything but an honour, and a very great honour, to be compelled to defend the greatest freedom that subjects of any country have ever known--to give up his life for his Motherland? The adoption of the National Service Scheme has caused me the liveliest possible satisfaction, but there is still another danger to be met by, not only the British people, but the British Government itself; that is, the under-estimation of the power and resources of the German menace. The misleading statements which for the past year have figured in many English journals, to the effect that men of fifty and boys of fifteen are sent to the front on account of the exhaustion of German man power, have done incalculable harm in convincing thousands of people that the end of the war is at hand, and that the end will be victory for the Entente Powers. The Germans have now been fighting for eighteen months, and they are very far from being beaten. A man may, to his own entire satisfaction, come to the conclusion that given the Spring and sufficient munitions that the German resistance will crumble. The German resistance will never crumble; it will fight as fine a defensive campaign as it has fought a series of offensive campaigns. To under-rate an enemy is to undermine your own chances of victory. Shortly after my return to England I was talking with a Frenchman who for some time has lived in this country. He seemed to be convinced that the Germans had only old men and boys in the trenches in France, and that they were a mere army of cowards. “If that be the case,” I replied, “if they really are an army of cowards who throw down their arms and hold up their hands as soon as they are attacked, then why does not the glorious French Army hurl them back across the Rhine?” To this my friend made no reply. I relate the incident merely to show how many excellent people hypnotise themselves into the belief that the Germans are cowards. Any British “Tommy” who has participated in an attack on the German trenches, or who has helped to hold the lines against a German onslaught, will confirm me in my opinion that the Germans are very far indeed from being cowards.