‘I feel some little hesitation in replying to your request,’ he began, ‘but since the Editor is evidently anxious that I should do so, I will endeavour to give you my views as briefly and clearly as I can. Mind you, I don’t think it is either an easy or a gracious task to criticise the work of the brilliant staff of experts who have fought this Great War. Any strictures therefore that I may have to offer will deal entirely with generalities, or with political and military considerations; the details of the War seem to me to have been admirably carried out; and nothing else could have been expected, considering who are the men who have had part in it. Then, too, I feel that the Editor was justified, when he wanted to make a war, in making a war which lent itself to literary and dramatic treatment, instead of the war which might be more natural but less picturesque. One of my criticisms also goes to the root of the whole matter, and must necessarily seem a little by the way. It is that we are assured that a Great War ‘will probably occur in the immediate future.’ I do not think so, and have indeed, during all the alarms of the last seventeen years, been an obstinate believer in the probabilities of peace.’ ‘In which the writers clearly differ from you, Sir Charles,’ I replied; ‘I was much struck, however, by the clever manner in which they caused the war to break out in a small, insignificant country like Bulgaria, and then spread like a prairie fire, till the whole world was in a blaze. Do you consider that was a good and probable beginning?’ ‘Well,’ replied Sir Charles, as he leaned forward and began to rapidly sketch out a little map of the Continent, to which he made constant subsequent reference, ‘it was, perhaps, more ingenious than either scientific or probable. For my own part, I do not believe that the next great war, when it does come, will arise from events in the Balkan Peninsula. Of course, Russia can cause a war whenever she wishes to do so, but I don’t think she does so wish. The writers of this brochure state that they have striven to make the imaginary conflict spring from the most likely source of conflicts. They therefore chose Bulgaria, and I think with a good deal of reason from their point of view. But, for all that, Russia has pursued an adventurous and indefensible policy with regard to these States, and however irritating her conduct may have been, she means peace at heart. Therefore it is, I think, they are wrong.’ ‘It is quite fair then, Sir Charles, that I should ask you where you would have applied the match, had you been writing this war?’