Page:The ways of war - Kettle - 1917.pdf/258

 What is spoken of is the attempt to encumber purely military issues with a whole new economic programme, and to make the length of the war turn as much on the latter as on the former. It is time for somebody to say quite brutally that this is a struggle to destroy Prussian militarism, not to establish British Protectionism. To this last we may come, but blood and more especially the blood of men enrolled on another appeal, must not be the argument of the innovators. Nor is it suggested that the influence of economic on military resources should be overlooked. The economic factor has indeed proved to be far less decisive, or far less rapidly decisive, than many forecasters of events had anticipated, and for two very valid reasons. For one thing the enemy has at his command the whole centre of Europe, a vast geographical bloc interknit in almost all its parts by an uninterrupted system of intercourse which so far remains intact. For another the operation of the economic motive turns on the assumption of a minimum standard of life below which man will not consent to fall, willingly or at all. In normal times of peace this is rigid, and any serious depression of it will produce widespread commotion and revolt. But in war, when the struggle is or is conceived to be for national existence, belligerent peoples will agree to the lopping away of luxury after luxury and conventional necessary after conventional necessary. For a considerable part of