case, has been amicably settled, after an acute moment during the past month, by China's withdrawal from an untenable position. The Japanese will now proceed to the reconstruction of this line without let or hindrance. There remain, however, other outstanding differences, some of which are capable of causing disagreeable complications, though as we go to press comes the welcome news from the Times Peking correspondent that both Governments are making a hopeful effort to dispose of them. ***Spain seemed to be in the throes of a grave internal crisis -of which, needless to say, that seat of separatism and anarchy, Barcelona, was the centre-attributed abroad to the unpopularity of her little war in Morocco, and to the much-magnified reverse sustained by Spanish troops at the hands of the turbulent and treacherous tribes of the Riff, though doubts have latterly arisen as to the seriousness of the domestic crisis and in any event, the Spanish Government remained complete masters of the situation; it looks, however, as though the punishment of the Riff tribes might conceivably develop into a grosse affaire, demanding corresponding preparations and heavy expenditure. It is a European interest that Spain, as a Mandatory Power in Morocco, should achieve a short, sharp, and decisive victory. England warmly sympathises with the gallant young King in his difficulties and feels confident of his success. *** Sweden has been the scene of a so-called "general strike," which once looked formidable, but latterly has shown signs of "petering out," and promises to end in a fiasco. Class war is more easily advocated than organised as our Jack Cades will shortly learn. *** Among our articles will be found a sympathetic appreciation from the pen of Sir George Arthur of the great work achieved in India by Lord Kitchener during the seven eventful years of his Commandership in Chief. At a farewell banquet held in his honour at Simla (August 20), the Viceroy, Lord Minto, declared that Lord Kitchener "would bequeath to India an army better trained, equipped and paid than she had ever possessed before. Much speculation has been aroused by the surprising announcement that Lord Kitchener, now a Field-Marshal, has consented to become High Commissioner of the Mediterranean-a post suddenly relinquished by the Duke of Connaught on the ground that it is a costly sinecure.

THE ROLE OF A NATIONAL ARMY

OWING to the generally conflicting views expressed on the subject of National Defence and of Universal Service, the real issues at stake are becoming completely obscured. The British public, which was becoming seriously alarmed at the situation, has heard the Prime Minister's statement that the present military and naval resources are amply sufficient, in the opinion of the expert advisers of the Government, to secure this country against invasion, and is consequently relapsing into something like its former state of apathy with regard to the Army. In reality there has been much beating of the air, the true dangers have been ignored, and the fact that this is not realised can only be ascribed to a certain ignorance of elementary strategy and of British history on the part of the nation at large. It is easy to lay the blame on the military advisers of the Government, but they have, after all, only said what is, no doubt, true, that our resources are sufficient at the present moment to guard against invasion. But let us look facts squarely in the face and ask ourselves whether, in view of a war with a Continental power like Germany, our resources are sufficient not only to secure us against invasion but to emerge victorious from the struggle. It would really seem as if this view of the matter had never occurred to the British people. They have been deeply stirred by the somewhat crude picture of paterfamilias shooting Germans out of his bedroom window and being, in consequence, led out to die at the hands of a firing-party; they have cried out for more "Dreadnoughts," but they do not appear to realise that we may build a hundred "Dreadnoughts" and win another Trafalgar, we may create an army which will render the fear of invasion to be a mere jest, but that these measures will no more give us ultimate victory than did Trafalgar or the volunteer movement

of the beginning of the nineteenth century. The French naval power had been utterly destroyed, yet Napoleon continued to overrun Europe for the next ten years and by his Berlin Decrees reduced England to the verge of bankruptcy. The whole manhood of the nation was in arms, yet these volunteers contributed absolutely nothing to the eventual victory of England, as has been very clearly shown in Mr. Fortescue's work entitled "The County Lieutenancies and the Army." This author shows the makeshifts to which one War Minister after another was reduced in order to fill the ranks and how, had the war continued any longer, it would have been impossible to meet the demands which the struggle exacted. The present position of Germany in Europe does not differ in essentials from that of France during the eighteenth and the first years of the nineteenth centuries, and if we could realise the means by which we eventually triumphed over France it is inconceivable that we should hear so much at the present time of the fear of invasion and of the necessity of building "Dreadnoughts" to protect our coasts, as if victory depended only on the passive defence of these islands.

There is a common delusion that we have "muddled through "the various crises in our history by means of superior fighting qualities only, and the mistakes of our enemies and our own good fortune are frequently overlooked. From the days of the Armada organisation for war has been conspicuous by its absence. The few miserable Government ships, with crews dying of scurvy, short of ammunition and of supplies, who awaited the approach of Philip II.'s Armada, and the adventurous spirit of our seafaring population which destroyed it, are typical of the whole history of our colonial expansion. But the element of luck is forgotten. Froude has stated his deliberate opinion that but for a purely fortuitous delay of a few days in the Bay of Biscay, nothing could have prevented the landing of the Armada, and that the wretched levies whom Elizabeth reviewed in pomp at Tilbury would not have stood up a day against the veterans of Spain. Again, in our struggles with Louis XIV. and Louis XV. we were enabled to wrest the colonies of France from her while that nation was engaged in successive wars against various coalitions of European powers. For this we have to thank the mistaken policy of Louis XIV. who aban

doned the colonial schemes of Colbert for the sake of territorial aggrandisement in Germany. His successor carried on the same policy. Dupleix in India and Montcalm in Canada were left to their fate, and France, who had forestalled us in both continents, was finally ousted from her possessions through the grossly shortsighted policy of her rulers. The command of the sea enabled us to undertake these expeditions, but victory was secured by our power to organise coalitions and to land an army on the Continent which again and again formed the backbone of the allied armies by whose efforts the resources of France were gradually destroyed.

The position of France during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars presents even more points of similarity to the present situation in Europe, but the common delusion that we saved Europe has led to such a complete misconception of the lessons of the war that it is necessary to draw attention to a few points. At the commencement we adopted our old policy of seizing French colonies and at the same time of landing an army on the Continent, but success did not, as formerly, crown our efforts. A phenomenon, previously unknown in the world and totally unexpected, had appeared, namely, a nation in arms animated by intense enthusiasm, and an organising genius in the person of Carnot to form them into a disciplined army. Nevertheless, had we but possessed that organisation for war, which has been so conspicuously absent in our history, there is no doubt that the allied army could have marched straight on Paris in 1793 and ended the war at a blow before the revolutionary troops had had time to organise. That opportunity was not to come again for twenty years, and for that the want of system and of preparation for war, and the ignorance of war which induced the Government to waste 80,000 lives in the West Indies and to send an ill-disciplined, ill-trained, ill-fed and ill-clothed army to Flanders, are alone responsible. This campaign was one long series of disasters. "It was," said the Duke of Wellington, "of great value to myself, as it taught me what not to do." It is recorded that British officers were so ignorant of their duties that Austrian officers had to instruct them in the method of placing outposts.

As to our subsequent conduct of the war, it was characterised

by the same ignorance, mismanagement and want of preparation. Of innumerable military expeditions to the West Indies, to Sicily, to Corsica, to Toulon, to the Balearic Islands, to Egypt, to Denmark and the Low Countries, very few were successful, many were disastrous, some were disgraceful. By far the greater number could have in the nature of things no material effect on the course of the struggle, and the truth is that nobody in the history of this world has ever mismanaged a war so completely as our greatest statesman, the younger Pitt. It is often said, and the assertion is to some degree supported by certain of Napoleon's own words, that the expedition to the Peninsula caused the downfall of Napoleon and the liberation of Europe. That it did contribute to the result cannot be denied, but here again there is one aspect of the matter which is always overlooked. After Sir John Moore's failure, an expedition was sent out under Wellington in 1809. The latter maintained himself in Portugal and kept the French forces occupied for more than three years, during which time Napoleon was at peace with every other Power, and yet practically ignored Wellington's existence, to this degree that he never considered it worth while to repair to Spain in person nor to employ all the resources at his disposal to overwhelm the English. To crown all, he, in 1812, actually undertook the invasion of Russia with half a million of men, leaving the English in undisputed possession of Portugal from which every Frenchman had been driven.

Many things contributed to the downfall of Napoleon, but the main factor was emphatically not the British Army or Navy, but the destruction of the Grand Army in Russia, followed by the levée en masse of the German peoples. Now this is a point which deserves attention, for our army which had in former wars been the mainstay of coalitions failed us hopelessly at the commencement of the struggle, and was only enabled to take a share in the final phase, through the fact that Napoleon chose to invade Russia with half a million men, when he might at any time have crushed Wellington with a fraction of that number. During the Waterloo campaign the British Army gained an increased reputation through the fact that it bore the brunt of the fighting at Quatre Bras and Waterloo; it was, however, in point of numbers as compared with those of its allies, inferior to former armies employed on the Continent.