without the help of the Russians, on whose assistance we were relying. It needs little imagination to picture what the results of this strategy might already have been, both in Europe and Asia, had the Russian Revolution not led to the temporary eclipse of that Power. It is not unduly optimistic to say that we should in all probability have had a victorious peace this year.

In all this the co-ordination of effort towards one clearly defined purpose is apparent, the guiding principle being the concentration of force in the main theatre of war, while restricted rôles are assigned to the forces in the minor theatres, every one of these operations playing a definite part in achieving the end in view. It has not been within Sir W. Robertson's power to reverse altogether the mistaken course taken by our strategy in the first year of the war, but every possible means has been taken to reduce these disadvantages to the minimum. In all his dispositions not a single mistake has been made in the course of the twenty months he has held the reins; the difficulties of every project and the measures necessary to overcome them have been accurately gauged, no detail has been overlooked, nothing has been left to chance, every contingency has been provided for in advance. Perhaps the most important feature of his work has been his influence in ensuring unity of purpose and of effort between all the Allies, a task which has required great tact, insight, and firmness.

The above has not been written in order to give Sir W. Robertson a "puff" in the Press, but because, in the anxious times which lie ahead of us, it is very necessary that he should be assured of the confidence and support of the public. He has to carry a greater burden than any other man in this or probably any Allied country. He is responsible for the supreme direction of a war in which British troops are operating in five different and widely separated theatres. He has to co-ordinate all these operations with those of our Allies; and as the share of the British Empire in the war increases so his load becomes heavier. To add to all his anxieties has come the temporary collapse of Russia, on which the success of many of our future plans must have depended. His public utterances display absolute confidence in ultimate victory, but at the same time a realization that it can only be won by the sternest test of endurance, by patience, determination, trust in and sympathy with the people on the

part of the Government, and by the unswerving pursuit of a sound military policy. There are certain persons who are accustomed to represent our principal soldiers and sailors as demigods, while others as frequently belittle them by suggesting that they are hidebound, prejudiced, and incapable of seeing more than one side of a question. Among this last class is the amateur strategist, who always knows of a short cut to victory in some remote part of the world, and inveighs against the narrow-mindedness of the military hierarchy. Now, our soldiers and sailors are neither demigods nor idiots, but just plain ordinary men who have spent their lives in the study of every aspect of war, and who have trained themselves expressly for the ordeal we are now passing through. This cannot be said of any other class of men; it should, of course, be true of our statesmen, but, unfortunately, is not. Our naval and military chiefs are placed in a position of fearful responsibility; on their decisions depend, not only the lives of thousands, but the fate of their country-nay, more in this war, the fate of civilization. The politician can commit blunder after blunder with impunity; no such latitude is allowed to the soldier. He is perfectly conscious that he will have to bear the whole blame of any miscalculation, that the very politicians who talk most glibly of legitimate gambles would be the first to sacrifice him if he committed one false move. Now it is not fair to place this burden upon any man unless he is assured of the loyalty and trust of Government and people. It is impossible for us who are not behind the scenes to know whether this support is forthcoming from the present War Cabinet, but there are reasons for entertaining doubts. In the first place, our Ministers are more ignorant of war than those of any other nation, because the latter have in most cases served in the army and are acquainted with the elements of the military profession. In the second place, the Dardanelles and Mesopotamia Commissions have shed a glaring light on the kind of difficulties soldiers have to contend with in dealing with politicians: the intense desire of the latter for a military success, no matter where so long as it will favour the political situation at home; the pressure that is brought to bear on Generals "to do something," to show some result for choice, the capture of some geographical point, always the snare of the civilian. Thirdly, history shows clearly that in every war our commanders have had the greatest difficulty in

for

persuading the Government to adhere to a sound, well-conceived military policy. In every great war we have succeeded by a policy aimed at gradually wearing out our adversary, and the most striking example of this is our struggle against Napoleon. There were plenty of "gambles" in that war which resulted in disaster. Our final victory lay in steadily supporting Wellington's army in the Peninsula in spite of every set-back and discouragement. The difficulty Wellington had in persuading Ministers to adhere to this policy was enormous. What is equally remarkable is the fact that the Ministers who at last realized the necessity and brought the war to a victorious conclusion were not geniuses or great orators, but simply men of common sense, courage, and disinterestedness. The country does not ask the War Cabinet any more brilliant qualities than these, and just as the Percevals and the Liverpools trusted Wellington, so we want the Lloyd Georges and the Curzons to trust Sir W. Robertson and Sir Douglas Haig. The fourth cause for doubt as to the attitude of the Government is the inherent jealousy of the politician for the soldier. In peace-time the former fills the public eye, and he cannot bring himself to take a back seat in war. In periods of great national emergency, however, the country does not look to the politician to save it. They are not indispensable; Governments come and go-" they have their day and cease to be." It is true that in the past we have had a Chatham, but our political system no longer turns out men of that calibre, and all we ask of our present-day statesmen is that they will stand aside and let the soldiers do the work. It is not their mission to conduct war, but to prepare for peace, a mission which is of almost equal importance and will earn no less gratitude from the nation if carried out with a view to the national and not to Party benefit.

It must, however, be recognized that there is only one means of ensuring that the soldiers shall be left unhampered in the conduct of the war-that is, that the country shall realize that these men are human and fallible, that an immense responsibility rests upon them, and that victory depends on enabling them to bear it. To this end we must insist on their being given a free hand in all matters connected with the direction of our strategy. And further, they have a right to demand through good and evil report, in all vicissitudes and anxieties, even in occasional failure, the confidence and sympathy of the community. THE EDITOR

HAMMER OR ANVIL ?

THE thesis of my earlier book, The Germans in England,* was that from the time of the Angevins to the time of the Tudors the struggle against the economic tyranny of the Hanseatic League furnished a master-key to English history. And I called this League German because in fact it was German. German it called itself and German it was called by its contemporaries. When the critics rebuked me for calling it German, I quoted in these pages from a score of charters and State documents in which it was so described.

Yet the critics are not satisfied. Thus, for example, the Times reviewer † :

The readers of his earlier work had had considerable difficulty in knowing precisely what he meant by "the Germans." . . . His language is still somewhat uncertain. He refers to "the Hanseatic and Imperial trade system," as if all the mighty Hapsburg Empire with its dominions stretching over half the known world was concerned in the plot.

Reviewers are an omniscient race; but this reviewer knows more of the League than the League itself. For the League called itself, not only German, but Imperial-"the Society of German Merchants of the Holy Roman Empire"; it bore the Imperial eagle on its coat of arms, and was accustomed to seek the protection of the Emperor in its foreign relations. The famous Augsburg Decree of Rudolph the Second speaks of the League as an Imperial trade organization, and Queen Elizabeth's reply describes it as "the allied towns of the Dutch [deutsch] Hanse in Germany," and again, “the said Hanse towns situate in the Empire." In the reign of Queen Mary the League sent an Embassy to England composed of three representatives of Lübeck, three of Cologne, two of Bremen, three of Hamburg, and two of Danzig; and the Emperor Charles V refers to this Embassy as " the men of Cologne and the other towns our subjects of the Empire."

How then shall I put it? The Hanseatic League was a trade organization situate in the German part of the Hapsburg

* The Germans in England, by Ian D. Colvin, published by the National Review, 6s. net; followed by The Unseen Hand in English History, the National Review Office, 7s. 6d. net.

↑ Times Literary Supplement, June 28.

Dominions, and its strongholds were and had always been the Western German cities. It existed before the Hapsburg emperors; it was already strong in the time of the Hohenstaufens; but it was always German and Western German. It had its houses in Bergen, London, Bruges, Antwerp, Lisbon, Venice, and Novgorod ; but these towns were not Hanseatic towns. They were never members of the League. No authority on the subject has ever suggested that they were anything but kontors-places to be dominated and exploited by the Hanseatic League but never admitted to the fellowship. The League had its German garrison in London as in other English towns; it had its fortified wharf and warehouse; it held also a gate of the city; but London was never represented at the Lübeck Parliament of the League, no more than Shanghai is represented in our House of Commons.

But why all this punctilio? Why this anxiety to prove that the Hanseatic League was not German, and that German commerce never dominated England? Is it because it disturbs what might be called the school-book view of English history, the view derived from those Whig historians who have so long and so supinely reigned over the realm of public opinion? And is English history a closed book which must never be opened except by those who are prepared to accept the doctrines of the orthodox? What is the orthodox view, which we find in Freeman, in Mackintosh, in Gardiner, in Macaulay, and in Acton? It is a preoccupation in two subjects. The Englishman is taken to be an animal who is perpetually fighting about his Constitution and about his religion. The heroes of the story are generally those who take the Low Church or Nonconformist side of the fight in religion and the Whig or Liberal side in politics. It is assumed that these two motives dominate English history, and that the Englishman is always and all the time rightly struggling to be free from some domestic tyranny in Church or State. As to foreign policy, France and Spain are the "natural enemy" and Germany the "natural ally," and the cause of quarrel is religion, liberty, "balance of power," or some vexed and obscure quarrel over territorial or dynastic titles. The Englishman takes only a distant and secondary interest in questions of existence. Other animals fight to live; the Englishman in order that he or somebody else shall be free. Liberty takes the place of daily food upon his table, and although he goes to church at the most one day in seven, he fights about religion the rest of the week. He may have a trade, but it is never mentioned, and the last way of finding his motive is to look for his interest. To suggest that any Englishman ever fought about any material object is a heresy so grave that it is a crime even to refer to it. Indeed, it is heretical to