basis that modern Continental warfare had become a high science. Hitherto we had not, and it was only our younger generals who had even studied this science.

There was, therefore, nothing for it but to attempt a complete revolution in the organization of the British Army at home. The nascent General Staff was finally organized in September, 1906, and its organization was shortly afterwards developed so as to extend to the entire Empire, as soon as a conference had taken place with the Ministers of the Dominions early in the following year. The outcome was a complete recasting, which, after three years' work, made it practicable rapidly to mobilize, not only 100,000, but 160,000 men; to transport them, with the aid of the Navy, to a place of concentration which had been settled between the staffs of France and Britain; and to have them at their appointed place within twelve days, an interval based on what the German Army required on its side for a corresponding concentration.

All the arrangements for this were worked out by the end of 1910. Both Sir John French and Sir Douglas Haig took an active part in the work. Behind the first-line army so organized, a second-line army of larger size, tho far less trained, and so designed that it could be expanded, was organized. This was the citizen or "Territorial" army, consisting in time of peace of fourteen divisions of infantry and artillery and fourteen brigades of cavalry, with the appropriate medical, sanitary, transport and other auxiliary services. Those serving in this second-line army were civilians, and, of course, much less disciplined than the officers and men of the first line. Its primary function was home defense, but its members were encouraged to undertake for service abroad, if necessary; and a large part of this army, in point of fact, fought in France, Flanders and in the East soon after the beginning of the war, in great measure making up by intelligence for shortness of training.

To say, therefore, that we were caught unprepared is not accurate. Compulsory service in a period of peace was out of the question for us. Moreover, it would have taken at least two generations to organize, and meanwhile we should have been weaker than without it. We had studied the situation and had done the only thing we thought we could do, after full deliberation. Our main strength was in our Navy and its tradition. Our secondary contribution was a small army fashioned to fulfil a scientifically measured function. It was, of course, a very small army, but it had a scientific organization on the basis of which a great expansion was possible. After all, what we set ourselves to accomplish we did accomplish. If the margin by which a just sufficient success was attained in the early days of the war seems to-day narrow, the reason of the narrow margin lay largely in the unprepared condition of the armies of Russia, on which we and France had reckoned for rapid co-operation. Anyhow, we fulfilled our contract, for at eleven o'clock on Monday morning, August 3, 1914, we mobilized without a hitch the whole of the Expeditionary Force, amounting to six divisions and nearly two cavalry divisions, and began its transport over the Channel when war was declared thirty-six hours later. We also at the same time successfully mobilized the Territorial Force and other units, the whole amounting to over half a million men. The Navy was already in its war stations, and there was no delay at all in putting what we had prepared into operation.

I speak of this with direct knowledge, for as the Prime Minister, who was holding temporarily the seals of the War Secretary, was overwhelmed with business, he asked me, tho I had then become Lord Chancellor, to go to the War Office and give directions for the mobilization of the machinery with which I was so familiar, and I did this on the morning of Monday, August 3, and a day later handed it over, in working order, to Lord Kitchener.

I now return to what was the main object of British foreign policy between 1905 and 1914, the prevention of the danger of any outbreak with Germany. Sir Edward Grey worked strenuously with this well-defined object. If France were overrun, our island security would be at least diminished, and he had, therefore, in addition to his anxiety to avert a general war, a direct national interest to strive for, in the preservation of peace between Germany and France. Ever since the mutilation which the latter country had suffered, as the outcome of the War of 1870, she had felt sore, and her relations with Germany were not easy. But she did not seek a war of revenge. It would have been too full of risk even if she had not desired peace, the Franco-Russian Dual Alliance notwithstanding. The notion of an encirclement of Germany, excepting in defense against aggression by Germany herself, existed only in the minds of nervous Germans. Still, there was suspicion, and the question was, how to get rid of it.

I have already referred to the visit I paid to the Emperor at Berlin in the autumn of 1906. He invited me to a review which he held of his troops there, and in the course of it rode up to the carriage in which I was seated and said, "A splendid machine I have in this army, Mr. Haldane; now isn't it so? And what could I do without it, situated as I am between the Russians and the French? But the French are your allies—are they not? So I beg pardon."

I shook my head and smiled deprecatingly, and replied that, were I in his Majesty's place, I should in any case feel safe from attack with the possession of this machine, and that for my own part I enjoyed being behind it much more than if I had to be in front of it.

Next day, when at the Schloss, he talked to me fully and cordially. What follows I extract from the record I made after the conversation in my diaries, which were kept by desire of King Edward, and which were printed by the Government on my return to London.

He spoke of the Anglo-French Entente. He said that it would be wrong to infer that he had any critical thought about our entente with France. On the contrary he believed that it might even facilitate good relations between France and Germany. He wished for these good relations, and was taking steps through gentlemen of high position in France to obtain them. Not one inch more of French territory would he ever covet. Alsace and Lorraine originally had been German, and now even the least German of the two, Lorraine, because it preferred a monarchy to a republic, was welcoming him enthusiastically whenever he went there. That he should have gone to Tangier, where both English and French welcomed him, was quite natural. He desired no quarrel, and the whole fault was Delcassé's, who had wanted to pick a quarrel and bring England into it.

I told the Emperor that, if he would allow me to speak my mind freely, I would do so. He assented, and I said to him that his attitude had caused great uneasiness in England, and that this, and not any notion of forming a tripartite alliance of France, Russia, and England against him, was the reason of the feeling there had been. We were bound by no military alliance. As for our entente, some time since we had difficulties with France over Newfoundland and Egypt, and we had made a good business arrangement (gutes Geschäft) about these complicated matters of detail, and had simply carried out our word to France.

He said that he had no criticism to make on this, except that if we had told him so early there would have been no misunderstanding. Things were better now, but we had not always been pleasant to him and ready to meet him. His army was for defense, not for offense. As to Russia, he had no Himalayas between him and Russia,