organs.  Soldiers do not think of these things:  “theirs not to reason why:  theirs but to do and die”; but sensible civilians have to.  And even soldiers know that you cannot make ammunition as fast as you can burn it, nor produce men and horses as instantaneously as you can kill them by machinery.  It would be well, indeed, if our papers, instead of writing of ten-inch shells, would speak of L1,000 shells, and regimental bands occasionally finish the National Anthem and the Brabanconne and the Marseillaise with the old strain, “That’s the way the money goes:  Pop goes the Ten Inch.”  It is easy to rebuke Mr. Norman Angell and Herr Bloch for their sordid references to the cost of war; and Mr. H.G.  Wells is profoundly right in pointing out that the fact that war does not pay commercially is greatly to its credit, as no high human activity ever does pay commercially.  But modern war does not even pay its way.  Already our men have “pumped lead” into retreating Germans who had no lead left to pump back again; and sooner or later, if we go on indefinitely, we shall have to finish the job with our fists, and congratulate ourselves that both Georges Carpentier and Bombardier Wells are on our side.  This war will stop when Germany throws up the sponge, which will happen long before she is utterly exhausted, but not before we ourselves shall be glad enough of a rest.  Nations are like bees:  they cannot kill except at the cost of their own lives.

The question of terms will raise a fierce controversy.  At the extremes of our public opinion we have two temperaments, first, our gentlemen, our sportsmen, our daredevils, our preux chevaliers.  To these the notion of reviling your enemy when he is up; kicking him when he is knocked down by somebody else; and gouging out his eyes, cutting out his tongue, hewing off his right arm, and stealing all his money, is abhorrent and cowardly.  These gallants say, “It is not enough that we can fight Germany to-day.  We can fight her any day and every day.  Let her come again and again and yet again.  We will fight her one to three; and if she comes on ten to one, as she did at Mons, we will mill on the retreat, and drive her back again when we have worn her down to our weight.  If her fleet will not come out to fight us because we have too many ships, we will send all the odds in our favour back to Portsmouth and fight ship to ship in the North Sea, and let the bravest and best win.”  That is how gallant fighters talk, and how Drake is popularly (though erroneously) supposed to have tackled the Armada.

The Ignoble Attitude of Cruel Panic.