I shall endeavour in my fourth volume both to refute these accusations conclusively and to emphasize the principal lessons for our future guidance to be drawn from the campaign. The work of the War Ministry of an Empire like ours ought not to be of a haphazard nature. Its success must depend on the amount of money allotted to military needs and the manner of expenditure of these funds. The country spends large sums on the army, thus starving numerous other urgent demands, and an unsuccessful war naturally leads to the conclusion that this expenditure has been thrown away. But, before forming any judgment, it is necessary to be in possession of full details of what had to be undertaken, and of the financial means available. The problems which confronted our War Department were the inevitable result of the policy pursued by it in former years; they were, so to speak, the legacy of the nineteenth century to the twentieth. That the size and cost of an army must be in direct proportion to the growth of a nation and the military activity of its neighbours, is a fact that cannot be ignored if we wish to rest assured of the safety of our Empire. To us, in our comparatively immature state of civilization, the burden of the armed peace necessitated by the immense growth of armaments in Europe seems almost unbearable, and our available funds are inadequate to meet all the initial and recurring financial demands. It has only been possible to satisfy the most urgent. To decide which were most important among such things as the re-armament of the artillery, the construction of fortifications and barracks, the accumulation of reserves, and the improvement of the condition of the troops, etc., was a complicated and difficult enough matter for the War Department; but the decision upon larger questions, such as which frontiers were most in danger of attack or on which side our policy of expansion called for another forward step, was beyond its scope. The solution was dependent on the general political programme, and this was, in its turn, the result of the policy followed in former centuries, and the outcome of the internal condition and needs of the Empire.