Now, if tales were true, entire towns would be destroyed with a single shell.

The new conditions were unimaginable.

Military experts prophesied extravagantly, contradicting one another on vital points; the whole procedure of war was a matter of theory; there were no precedents with which to compare it.

It was as if archers disputed as to the results of cordite.

Only one thing was certain--that the East had every modern engine, and, as regards male population, half as much again as the rest of the world put together; and the conclusion to be drawn from these premisses was not reassuring to England.
But imagination simply refused to speak.