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England has in this war reached a height of achievement loftier than that which she attained in the struggle with Napoleon; and she has reached that height in a far shorter period. Her giant effort, crowned with a success as wonderful as the effort itself, is worthily described by the author of this book. Mrs. Ward writes nobly on a noble theme.

This war is the greatest the world has ever seen. The vast size of the armies, the tremendous slaughter, the loftiness of the heroism shown, and the hideous horror of the brutalities committed, the valour of the fighting men, and the extraordinary ingenuity of those who have designed and built the fighting machines, the burning patriotism of the people who defend their hearthstones, and the far-reaching complexity of the plans of the leaders—all are on a scale so huge that nothing in past history can be compared with them. The issues at stake are elemental. The free peoples of the world have banded together against tyrannous militarism and government by caste. It is not too much to say that the outcome will largely determine, for daring and liberty-loving souls, whether or not life is worth living. A Prussianised world would be as intolerable as a world ruled over by Attila or by Timur the Lame.

It is in this immense world-crisis that England has played her part; a part which has grown greater month by month. Mrs. Ward enables us to see the awakening of the national soul which rendered it possible to play this part; and she describes the works by which the faith of the soul justified itself.

What she writes is of peculiar interest to the United States. We have suffered, or are suffering, in exaggerated form, from most (not all) of the evils that were eating into the fibre of the British character three years ago—and in addition from some purely indigenous ills of our own. If we are to cure ourselves it must be by our own exertions; our destiny will certainly not be shaped for us, as was Germany's, by a few towering autocrats of genius, such as Bismarck and Moltke. Mrs. Ward shows us the people of England in the act of curing their own ills, of making good, by gigantic and self-sacrificing exertion in the present, the folly and selfishness and greed and soft slackness of the past. The fact that England, when on the brink of destruction, gathered her strength and strode resolutely back to safety, is a fact of happy omen for us in America, who are now just awaking to the folly and selfishness and greed and soft slackness that for some years we have been showing.

As in America, so in England, a surfeit of materialism had produced a lack of high spiritual purpose in the nation at large; there was much confusion of ideas and ideals; and also much triviality, which was especially offensive when it masqueraded under some high-sounding name. An unhealthy sentimentality—the antithesis of morality—has gone hand in hand with a peculiarly sordid and repulsive materialism. The result was a soil in which various noxious weeds flourished rankly; and of these the most noxious was professional pacificism. The professional pacificist has at times festered in the diseased tissue of almost every civilisation; but it is only within the last three-quarters of a century that he has been a serious menace to the peace of justice and righteousness. In consequence, decent citizens are only beginning to understand the base immorality of his preaching and practice; and he has been given entirely undeserved credit for good intentions. In England as in the United States, domestic pacificism has been the most potent ally of alien militarism. And in both countries the extreme type has shown itself profoundly unpatriotic. The damage it has done the nation has been limited only by its weakness and folly; those who have professed it have served the devil to the full extent which their limited powers permitted.

There were in England—just as there are now in America—even worse foes to national honour and efficiency. Greed and selfishness, among capitalists and among labour leaders, had to be grappled with. The sordid baseness which saw in the war only a chance for additional money profits to the employer was almost matched by the fierce selfishness which refused to consider a strike from any but the standpoint of the strikers.

But the chief obstacle to be encountered in rousing England was sheer short-sightedness. A considerable time elapsed before it was possible to make the people understand that this was a people's war, that it was a matter of vital personal concern to the people as a whole, and to all individuals as individuals. In America we are now encountering much the same difficulties, due to much the same causes.

In England the most essential thing to be done was to wake the people to their need, and to guide them in meeting the need. The next most essential was to show to them, and to the peoples in friendly lands, whether allied or neutral, how the task was done; and this both as a reason for just pride in what had been achieved and as an inspiration to further effort.

Mrs. Ward's books—her former book and her present one—accomplish both purposes. Every American who reads the present volume must feel a hearty and profound respect for the patriotism, energy, and efficiency shown by the British people when they became awake to the nature of the crisis; and furthermore, every American must feel stirred with the desire to see his country now emulate Britain's achievement.

In this volume Mrs. Ward draws a wonderful picture of the English in the full tide of their successful effort. From the beginning England's naval effort and her money effort have been extraordinary. By the time Mrs. Ward's first book was written, the work of industrial preparedness was in full blast; but it could yet not be said that England's army in the field was the equal of the huge, carefully prepared, thoroughly coordinated military machines of those against whom and beside whom it fought. Now, the English army is itself as fine and as highly efficient a military machine as the wisdom of man can devise; now, the valour and hardihood of the individual soldier are being utilised to the full under a vast and perfected system which enables those in control of the great engine to use every unit in such fashion as to aid in driving the mass forward to victory.

Even the Napoleonic contest was child's play compared to this. Never has Great Britain been put to such a test. Never since the spacious days of Elizabeth has she been in such danger. Never, in any crisis, has she risen to so lofty a height of self-sacrifice and achievement. In the giant struggle against Napoleon, England's own safety was secured by the demoralisation of the French fleet. But in this contest the German naval authorities have at their disposal a fleet of extraordinary efficiency, and have devised for use on an extended scale the most formidable and destructive of all instruments of marine warfare. In previous coalitions England has partially financed her continental allies; in this case the expenditures have been on an unheard-of scale, and in consequence England's industrial strength, in men and money, in business and mercantile and agricultural ability, has been drawn on as never before. As in the days of Marlborough and Wellington, so now, England has sent her troops to the continent; but whereas formerly her expeditionary forces, although of excellent quality, were numerically too small to be of primary importance, at present her army is already, by size as well as by excellence, a factor of prime importance, in the military situation; and its relative as well as absolute importance is steadily growing.

And to her report of the present stage of Great Britain's effort in the war, Mrs. Ward has added some letters describing from her own personal experience the ruin wrought by the Germans in towns like Senlis and Gerbéviller, and in the hundreds of villages in Northern, Central, and Eastern France that now lie wrecked and desolate. And she has told in detail, and from the evidence of eye-witnesses, some of the piteous incidents of German cruelty to the civilian population, which are already burnt into the conscience of Europe, and should never be forgotten till reparation has been made.

Mrs. Ward's book is thus of high value as a study of contemporary history. It is of at least as high value as an inspiration to constructive patriotism.