One of the things the world ought to learn from the war that now afflicts it is that no nation can conquer the world by stealth. It is one of the happy shortcomings of political selfishness that its agents usually fancy they can cover their tracks. How often do we see a bad politician doing something wrong in the false confidence that while he knows what he is doing the people cannot see it! So with Germany in the years before the war. Making her plans for large accretions of power, she thought she could steal a march on other nations and gain in a spurt a position from which at a later time she could extend her power by other and still larger sweeps of conquest. She did not think that the other nations would take part until it was too late. But the rest of the world was as wide awake as she. No man in England accustomed to view political things in the large failed to see the instant the war began that the hour of crisis for his country was at hand. If Great Britain had not fought in August, 1914, she would have been the stupidest nation in the world. To have allowed her greatest rival to sit down in the French channel ports would have been suicidal for her. The only probable explanation of Germany’s failure to realize this is that she had become so confident of the superiority of her own mind that she thought all other minds were sodden. In a similar way, when she had carried on the war for two years and a half and resorted to the submarine in ruthless attacks on American ships of commerce, she should have known that she was giving the United States a reason for participating in the war at a time when it was clear to most Americans that their national safety demanded that they should take part. If by this kind of battle the Germans forced Europe to bend to her, what could we expect in the future? The very imminence of German success demanded that the United States should throw herself into the struggle. And after the war is over this truth will be written indelibly in the pages of history: No great nation can be allowed to conquer the world piecemeal. CHAPTER IX IF THE SUBMARINES FAIL The German people say the submarines will not fail. They seem to think that what they call the highest achievement of the scientific mind of Germany cannot fail. There is little doubt that they pin on this arm of the service their last hope of securing a decision in actual warfare. If it fails them they can look forward only to a long course of sheer dogged resistance, hoping they can last longer than their adversaries. Let us consider the probable results respectively of the success and the failure of the submarine campaign.