The population of France is roughly forty millions; that of Germany} sixty-five millions; that of the United Kingdom, forty-five millions. As regards numbers of men trained to bear arms, France by 1911 had already come to the end of her resources; Germany had still considerable means of expansion; Britain alone had not yet seriously attempted to put forth her strength. Had we done so in time the effect must have been final and decisive; there would then have been full security against disturbance of the peace of Europe by a deliberately calculated war. Europe's greatest need therefore was that Britain should possess an army formidable not only in valour, but also in numbers: her greatest peril lay in the fact that, as to the second of these requirements, Britain was deficient. No power from the Atlantic seaboard to the Ural Mountains, save that one alone which contemplated the conquest and spoliation of its neighbours, would have been disquieted--or indeed anything else but reassured--had the British people decided to create such an army. For by reason of England's peculiar interests--or rather perhaps from her lack of all direct personal interests in European affairs, other than in peace and the balance of power--she was marked out as the natural mediator in Continental disputes. In these high perplexities, however, it is not the justice of the mediator which restrains aggression, so much as the fear inspired by his fleets and the strength of his battalions. [1] October 1913. [2] This view was held by no one more strongly than by Lord Roberts. During the last five-and-twenty years the writer has probably seen as much of soldiers as falls to the lot of most civilians, but nowhere, during that period, from the late senior Field-Marshal downwards, has he ever encountered that figment of the pacifist imagination of which we read so much during 1912-1914--"a military clique which desires to create a conscript army on the European model for purposes of aggression on the continent of Europe." The one thought of all soldiers was adequate defence. Their one concern was _how to prevent war_.... M. Clemenceau once urged that Lord Roberts should receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his advocacy of 'conscription' in England. This proposal was made quite seriously. {317} CHAPTER II THE COMPOSITION OF THE BRITISH ARMY The doubt and anxiety of public opinion in 1912 were not allayed when the strength and composition of the British Army came to be considered.