Looking at the present war from the standpoint of the Allies, the object of it is to repel the encroachments of materialism, working its way through the ruin of ideas, which have been cherished always, save in the dark ages when civilisation was overwhelmed by barbarism. Looking at the matter from our own particular standpoint, it is also incidentally a struggle for the existence of democracy. The chief question {185} we have to ask ourselves is whether our people will fight for their faith and traditions with the same skill and courage as the Germans for their material ends? Will they endure sacrifices with the same fortitude as France and Russia? Will they face the inevitable eagerly and promptly, or will they play the laggard and by delay ruin all--themselves most of all? ... This war is not going to be won for us by other people, or by some miraculous intervention of Providence, or by the Germans running short of copper, or by revolutions in Berlin, nor even by the break-up of the Austrian Empire. In order to win it we shall have to put out our full strength, to organise our resources in men and material as we have never done before during the whole of our history. We have not accomplished these things as yet, although we have expressed our determination, and are indeed willing to attempt them. We were taken by surprise, and the immediate result has been a great confusion, very hard to disentangle. Considering how little, before war began, our people had been taken into the confidence of successive governments, as to the relations of the British Empire with the outside world; how little education of opinion there had been, as to risks, and dangers, and means of defence; how little leading and clear guidance, both before and since, as to duties--considering all these omissions one can only marvel that the popular response has been what it is, and that the confusion was not many times worse. What was the mood of the British race when this war broke upon them so unexpectedly? To what extent were they provided against it in a material sense? And still more important, how far were {186} their minds and hearts prepared to encounter it? It is important to understand those things, but in order to do this it is necessary to look back over a few years. By a coincidence which may prove convenient to historians, the end of the nineteenth century marked the beginning of a new epoch[2]--an interlude, of brief duration as it proved--upon which the curtain was rung down shortly before midnight on the 4th of August 1914.