We had, continued Mr. Kipling, no reason to believe that
Germany would break up suddenly and dramatically, as a few people still believed. She took two generations to prepare herself in every detail and through every fibre of her national being for this war, and she was playing for the highest stakes in the world—the dominion of the world. It seemed to him that she must either win or bleed to death almost where her lines run to-day. " Therefore we and our allies must continue to pass our children through fire to Moloch until Moloch perish. What- ever has been dealt out to Belgium, France, and Poland will be England's fate tenfold if we fail to subdue the Germans. . . If the Allies are beaten there will be no spot on the globe where a soul can escape from the domination of this enemy of mankind." This was a war to the death against the power of darkness, with whom any peace except on our own terms would be more terrible than any war. Mr. Kipling insisted on the need of a steady and unbroken flow of men coming in to be trained, because the supply must always be months ahead of other supplies. You could use equipment the minute you got it, but you could not use a man till he had been trained.
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