will be grave domestic trouble in Russia and, as in the case of Turkey, German representatives will think while British representatives play. The preparations may occupy ten years or twenty years, but they will proceed. The aim will be a war with Russia neutral or friendly to Germany. If it occurs…One has only to imagine where we should be to-day if Germany had not made the error of abandoning the Bismarckian tradition.
Behind this is a further possibility. China is just as capable as Japan of learning the use of thirteen-inch guns and maxims. Sir Hiram Maxim, in fact, who knows both China and the gun, quite agrees with me on that. And China has, behind that stoical and almost child-like expression it presents to Europe, an acute memory that for thirty years we have treated it with flagrant injustice. It may take decades to undo the evil of ages of Manchu misgovernment and organise the resources of the country, but the day will come when an alert and powerful nation of 500,000,000 Orientals will press against its frontiers. We may remember that the Mongol banners have before now fluttered over Moscow and reached the Mediterranean. And the Mongols are not the only awakening people. We may yet see an anti-European combination from the Asiatic shore of the Pacific to the African shore of the Atlantic. These are some of the possibilities we hand on to our children if we do not in time abandon the military system.
