Trying to map and measure that dislocation is rather like one’s first effort to think in sun’s distances. It is to transfer one’s mind to a new and overwhelming scale. Never did any time carry so swift a burthen of change as this time. It is manifest that in a year or so the world of men is going to alter more than it has altered in the last century and a half, more indeed than it ever altered before these last centuries since history began. Think of the mere geographical dislocation. There is scarcely a country in Europe that will not emerge from this struggle with entirely fresh frontiers, sovereign powers will vanish from the map, new sovereign powers will come. In the disorders that are upon us and of which this war itself is the mere preliminary phase in uniform, inevitably there must be social reconstruction. Who can doubt it? Who can doubt the break-up of confidence and usage that is in progress? Plainly you can see famine coming—in France, in Germany, in Russia. Does anyone suppose that those sham efficient Germans have fully worked out the care and feeding of the madly distended hosts they have hurled at France? Does anyone dream that they have reckoned for a check and halt? Does anyone imagine their sanitary arrangements are perfect? There will be pestilence. And can one believe that whatever feats of financial fiction we contrive, _their_ financial crash can be staved off, and that the bankers of Hamburg and Frankfort are likely to be shovelling gold next January in a still methodical world? The German State machine has probably already done all that it was ever made to do. It stands now exhausted amidst the turmoil of its consequences. Its mobilization arrangements are said to have been astonishingly complete. Ten million men for and against have been got into the field—with ammunition. Prussian Germany has carried out its arrangements and committed the business to Gott. German foresight has exhausted itself. If Gott fail Germany, I do not believe that Germany has the remotest idea what to do next. For the most part those millions will never get home any more. They will certainly never get back to their work again, because it will have disappeared. When I think of European statecraft presently trying to put all these things back again I am reminded of a story of a friend whose neighbour tried to cut his throat and then repented. He came round to her with a towel about his neck making peculiar noises. It was a distressing but illuminating experience for her. She was a plucky and resourceful woman, and she did her best. “There was such a lot of it,” she said. “I hadn’t an idea things were packed so tight in us.”