If the under-sea boats do all the Germans expect of them the result is soon told. Great Britain will be forced to make lame and inefficient war, France will be unable to do more than hold on to the line that she occupies, and the United States, unable to send her vast army across the seas in large numbers, will not be able to repair the loss of strength that her allies sustain. Under such circumstances Russia, even if she should recover from her present state of weakness, could hardly deliver the blows that would bring Germany to reason. Under such conditions the war would end without the defeat of the Teutons, and Mittel-Europa would still be impending. If the enthusiasm of victory would stimulate such a union, the realization that Germany and Austria-Hungary were pressed back to the wall and must fight for their future existence might equally bring them to unite their fortunes. In fact, if these two states wish to unite it is hard to see how they are to be prevented, unless at the end of the war they are so much weaker than their opponents that they can be forbidden to take such a step, with assurance that the prohibition will be respected. To form such a union would be, in fact, to snatch victory out of sore distress; for the united empires, even though Serbia, Bulgaria, and Turkey were left out of account, would have a population of 116,000,000, which is more than the population of the United States and smaller only than that of Russia and China. Ten years’ breathing space in which to reorganize the industrial and social life of so large a body of men would work wonders with them; and when reorganized and fired by a common ambition they would be able to dictate terms to any two of the nations of Western Europe. It is the probable union of these states rather than the power of either when acting alone, that makes it necessary for the rest of the world to procure their defeat. In two ways the union can be prevented. One is to inflict such a defeat on the central allies that they will not dare run the risk of another war through endeavoring to combine. Possibly such a defeat could be inflicted by fighting long and winning great victories. It would have to be a greater victory than was won by Prussia over France in 1871; for after that victory France, fired with hatred for all that was German, was so much feared by her conquerors that it became a chief object of their diplomacy to keep her isolated by drawing possible allies over to the German interest. The great military strength of Germany at present hardly warrants the hope that she can be brought to a lower state than France at the end of the siege of Paris.