It is essential to put certain notions out of our heads and certain other notions into them. From the beginning of the war, a large part of the press--acting, we are entitled to suppose, in patriotic obedience to the directions of the Press Bureau--has fostered ideas which do not correspond with the facts. Information has been doled out and presented in such a way as to destroy all sense of proportion in the public mind. It is not an uncommon belief,[4] for example, that we with our Allies--ever since the first onset, when, {429} being virtuously unprepared, we were pushed back some little distance--have been doing much better than the Germans; that for months past our adversaries have been in a desperate plight--lacking ammunition, on the verge of bankruptcy and starvation, and thoroughly discouraged. There is also a tendency to assume--despite Lord Kitchener's grave and repeated warnings to the contrary--that the war is drawing rapidly to a conclusion, and that, even if we may have to submit to some interruption of our usual summer holidays, at any rate we shall eat our Christmas dinners in an atmosphere of peace and goodwill. The magnitude of the German victories, both in the East and West, during the earlier stages of the war, is not realised even now by the great majority of our fellow-countrymen; while the ruinous consequences of these victories to our Allies--the occupation of Belgium, of a large part of northern France, and of Western Poland--is dwelt on far too lightly. Nor is it understood by one man in a hundred, that up to the end of last year, British troops were never holding more than thirty miles, out of that line of nearly five hundred which winds, like a great snake, from Nieuport to the Swiss frontier. On the contrary, it is quite commonly believed that we have been doing our fair share of the fighting--or even more--by land as well as sea. A misleading emphasis of type and comment, together with a dangerous selection of items of news, are responsible for these illusions; while the prevalence of these illusions is largely responsible for many of our labour difficulties. Such dreams of inevitable and speedy victory {430} are no doubt very soothing to indolent and timid minds, but they do not make for a vigorous and resolute spirit in the nation, upon which, more than upon anything else, the winning of this war depends. In some quarters there appears still to linger a ridiculous idea that we went into this war, out of pure chivalry, to defend Belgium.[5] We went into it to defend our own existence, and for no other reason. We made common cause with Allies who were menaced by the same danger as ourselves; but these, most fortunately, had made their preparations with greater foresight than we had done. The actual fighting has taken place, so far, in their territories and not in ours; but the issue of this war is not one whit less a matter of life-or-death for us, than it is for them.