Then each shall take with stubborn grip His rifle as he took his whip, And when the Flag’s unfurled, The clerk shall drop his futile pen To lift his well-loved lance—and then A nation fronts the world! ARTHUR H. ADAMS. How long will the War last? No two people agree about this, and that however wise, however clever, even however experienced in war they may be. It will be very interesting to see who among our friends have proved right; those who say it will be over soon, or those others who believe it may last years. There is one thing, however, about which even now we all are agreed. This is that, however long the war may last, Britain and her Allies will never give up the fight until victory is assured. This great war has been full of surprises, which soldiers and historians will go on discussing for many years to come. Never before, as I have already explained, had such vast masses of men been engaged, never before had battle fronts extended for two hundred, and even three hundred, miles. Not so very long ago, battles never took more than a week or ten days at the most before what soldiers call a “decision” was reached. By “decision,” soldiers mean the complete defeat of one army or the other, so that it is unable to gather itself together and fight again. Even the Battle of the Aisne, which was really a row of battles on a line as long as from London to Carlisle, did not produce a decision of that kind. Without going into a long explanation which you might not be able to understand, I will try to show how the Battle of the Aisne simply did not end at all, but gradually melted, so to speak, into what we may call the Battle of the Dykes. One great reason for this singular result, or absence of result, is to be found in the use of aircraft. In the Italian War in Tripoli, and in the Balkan War, aeroplanes had done good service, but this was the first occasion on which they had been employed on a great scale, and the effect of their employment was that neither side could prepare those surprises for the enemy which, in old days, brought about decisive victories. Napoleon used always to feel by means of scouts for the point at which his enemy was weakest, and against that point he would throw his whole strength. But if Napoleon were alive now, he could not wage war in that way. It is true that his aeroplanes would find out the enemy’s weak point quickly, but the enemy, in his turn, would quickly find out where Napoleon was bringing up fresh men, and would make arrangements to meet them.