for long to conceal her knowledge from the world. {188}
That she herself has always been dimly aware of the nature of her strength—though not perhaps of her potential weakness—is shown by her steady insistence upon the necessity of aggression, upon maintaining the attack at whatever cost of life. This is a principle she has steadily acted upon throughout the war. It is exemplified by the whole series of terrible lunges at her enemies she has made. The strategic significance of these has, perhaps, become less as the moral necessity for them has become greater. France, Flanders, Russia, and the Balkans have in turn had to supply the moral food of victory and attack without which she would soon have starved. There is a quality at which the imagination cannot but be appalled in this fate of a great and wonderful nation, however much her alienation of herself from the instincts of mankind may have frozen the natural currents of pity. Panting with the exhaustion of her frightful blow at Russia, she must yet turn with who knows what weariness to yet another enterprise, in which to find the moral necessities which the Russian campaign was already ceasing to supply. It is to a similar mechanism that we must look to trace the ultimate source of the submarine and aircraft campaigns against England. Strategically, these proceedings may or may not have been regarded hopefully; possibly they were based on a definite military plan, though they do not to us have that appearance. Very probably they were expected to disorganize English morale. Behind them both, however, whether consciously or not, was the moral necessity to do something against England. This is indicated by the circumstances and the periods of the war at which they were seriously taken up. As both the submarine and the Zeppelin campaigns involve no great expenditure or dissipation of power, the fact that their value is moral rather than military, and concerned {189} with the morale of their inventors rather than that of their victims, is chiefly of academic interest as throwing further light on the nature of Germany’s strength and weakness.
Its attitude