The British Government and people are faced to-day with some, but not all--and not the greatest--of Lincoln's difficulties. Our traditions and theories are the same, to a large extent, as those which prevailed in America in 1863. But unlike the North we have had recent experience of war, and also of the sacrifices which war calls for from the civilian population. By so much the shock of compulsion would find us better prepared. But the other and much greater difficulties which beset Lincoln do not exist in the case of the British Government. We are not fighting against a foe inferior in numbers, but against one who up till now has been greatly superior in numbers--who has also been greatly superior in equipment, and preparation, and in deeply-laid plans. We are fighting against {420} a foe who has invaded and encroached; not against one who is standing on the defensive, demanding merely to be let go free. The family affections and friendships which would be outraged by conscription in this war against Germany are inconsiderable; mere dust in the balance. The present war is waged against a foreign nation; it is not civil war. It is waged against an enemy who plainly seeks, not his own freedom, but our destruction, and that of our Allies. It is waged against an enemy who by the treacherous thoroughness of his peace-time preparations, appears to our eyes to have violated good faith as between nations, as in the conduct of the campaign he has disregarded the obligations of our common humanity, We may be wrong; we may take exaggerated views owing to the bitterness of the struggle; but such is our mind upon the matter. Lincoln's task would have been light had such been the mind of the Northern States half a century ago, and had he been faced with nothing more formidable than the conditions which prevail in England to-day. It does not need the courage of a Lincoln to demand from our people a sacrifice, upon which the safety of the British Empire depends, even more certainly, than in 1863 did that of the American Union. [1] Once more it is desirable to correct the erroneous impression that the conscript armies of continental powers are under no liability to serve outside their own territories or overseas. [2] Influences of another kind altogether had much to do with the cleansing of public opinion--the writings of Henley, of Mahan, and of Mr. Rudyard Kipling. Though not so well known as the works of these, Henderson's _Life of Stonewall Jackson_ has nevertheless changed many courses of thought, and its indirect effect in removing false standards has been very great. I can never sufficiently acknowledge my personal debt to these four. [3] Cf. _Round Table_, March 1915, 'The Politics of War.' {421} CHAPTER IX THE CRUCIBLE OF WAR