They might, of course, go on for ever, and as I write I seem to see rising before me those libraries of the future, into which will come crowding the vast throng of books dealing in ever greater and greater detail with the events of the war and the causes of victory.

But this slight summary sketch of the military events, and especially of the final "effort" of England and the Empire, in the campaign of last year, which I set myself to do, is accomplished, however inadequately.

Except, indeed, for one huge omission which every reader of these few pages will at once suggest.

I have made only a few references here and there to the British Navy.
Yet on the British Navy, as we all know, everything hung.

If the Navy could not have protected our shores, and broken the submarine peril; if the British Admiralty had not been able to hold the Channel against the enemy and ward him off from the coasts and ports of France; if the British ships and British destroyers had not been there to bring over 70 per cent of the American Armies, and food both for ourselves and the Allies; if the sea-routes between us and our Colonies, between us and the East, could not have been maintained, Germany at this moment would have been ruling triumphant over a prostrate world.