Let us face the cruel truth and say: the Allies may yet be completely vanquished if certain developments come about, or if new strategic mistakes are added to those portentous ones which nearly lost them the fight, in spite of the righteousness of their cause and their immense, if badly employed, latent resources. If we wish, then, really to understand the crisis of to-day and the mighty peril which still menaces the world’s liberty, we must not shrink from meeting the realities of the military situation. We must be ready to face the most serious developments that can be conceived. Such an attitude implies, not pessimism, but that readiness for the worst which lies at the root of military wisdom. Let us now accept the following facts. The troops of France are beginning to be exhausted. The iniquitous administration of the Tsar had seriously compromised the provisioning of the Russian army with food and munitions. In that vast country, where conditions were ripe for idealistic extremists to guide the revolution toward pacifism or anarchy, there are alarming symptoms of the prevalence of the latter condition. The swarming agents of Germany are working there without respite. If their efforts shall finally succeed, the strength of Russia will swiftly dissolve. This would practically insure a German victory, for, with the Russian armies demoralized, all the forces of Pan-Germany could be flung against the Franco-British front. Moreover, if, from the moral standpoint, the Berlin government is universally to be despised, the same cannot be said about her general technical military ability, whose elements are as follows. Berlin is incontestably mistress of Pan-Germany—that is, she has absolute disposal of vast resources in men and in the manifold products of a great territory with a population of one hundred and seventy-six millions. The Kaiser’s Great General Staff, whose intellectual resourcefulness cannot be questioned, is quick to make the most of every lesson taught by the war. The annual levies of men from the various territories of Pan-Germany certainly outnumber the losses sustained each year by her troops. It is therefore, in my opinion, a grave error to assume, as the Allies have done, that the Germans can be beaten by mere attrition of their forces. By organizing under one uniform system the soldiery furnished by the many different countries of Pan-Germany, Prussian militarism has unquestionably given its troops a cohesion and a unity unknown to the vassal-allies of Germany before the war. This state of affairs has undoubtedly added to the military effectiveness of the vast armies which take their orders from Berlin.