"Is not this the reason?--Your government is afraid--even in this great struggle, where (as they put it) your future existence as a nation is at stake--that the English people--or at any rate so large a proportion of them, as if rendered uncomfortable could create a political disturbance--is not even yet prepared to make the necessary sacrifices. And so, to the amazement of us Germans, you let the older men, with families dependent on them, go forth to the war, urged on by a high sense of duty, while hundreds of thousands of young unmarried men are still allowed to stay at home. [Sidenote: COMPARISON OF RECRUITING] "You are still, it would appear, enamoured of your voluntary system. You have not yet abandoned your belief that it is the duty of the man, who possesses a sense of duty, to protect the skin, family, and property of the man who does not. To us this seems a topsy-turvy creed, and not more topsy-turvy than contemptible. In Germany and France--where for generations past the doctrine of private sacrifice for the public weal is ingrained, and has been approved in principle and applied in practice with unfaltering devotion--a 'voluntary' system might conceivably have some chance of providing such an army as you are in search of. But to the United Kingdom surely it is singularly inapplicable? Let me illustrate my meaning by a comparison. {163} "Our Kaiser in his New Year's message--which in Germany we all read with enthusiasm, and considered very noble and appropriate--summed up the military situation by saying that after five months' hard and hot fighting the war was still being waged almost everywhere off German soil, and on the enemies' territories. And he summed up the domestic situation by saying (and this, believe me, is true) that our nation stands in unexampled harmony, prepared to sacrifice its heart's blood for the defence of the Fatherland. Another three months have passed away, and these statements still hold good. "The point to which I chiefly wish to call your attention is one of numbers, and I will take my estimates of numbers from your own most famous newspaper experts. "Your claim, as I understand it, is that on New Year's Day 1915 you had--exclusive of Indian troops and Dominion contingents--between 2,000,000 and 2,500,000 men training and in the field. "Germany alone (here again I quote your English experts), without reckoning Austria, has actually put into the field during the past five months 5,000,000 men. Of these it is stated by your newspapers that she has lost in round figures 1,500,000, who have either been killed, or taken prisoners, or are too severely wounded to return as yet to the fighting line. But in spite of this depletion, your military statisticians tell us that Germany and her ally, at New Year's Day, still outnumbered the Allies on both the Eastern and the Western frontier.