Watching on the Rhine

It is probable that at no moment in the history of the world has a spirit of disillusion been so widespread and so profound as at the present time. Not only apparently have the high ideals which sustained us during the war evaporated completely, but they have yielded place to a sullen exasperation and ill-will dangerous in its temper and purpose. Moral war-weariness has sapped mind and body to such an extent that no powers of resilience remain. Suspicion as between class and class and nation and nation corrodes the foundations of life. Surly ill-will and a wholly anti-helpful attitude permeates the grudging performance of essential social services. People and classes pursue their own ends with complete disregard as to their reactions on other sections of society. Self-interest reigns supreme. The joy as of comrades of the open road faring together in a spirit of common service and brotherhood appears to have vanished. In England unrest and discontent wholly refuse to yield to the opportunist devices of a Government to whom all principles are mere questions of expediency. But England, mercifully for herself, whatever her spiritual sickness, knows nothing of the stark levels of practical misery and starvation on to which millions of continental people have been driven. We have no standard with which to gauge misery and hunger on a scale so appalling as that which has overtaken the dwellers of Eastern Europe. At times one wonders how it is that England, so great, so generous, so magnanimous in her traditional policy, has apparently neither eyes to see nor ears to hear what is going on. The voice of Gladstone could once rouse the country to a white flame of indignation over the sufferings of an oppressed people. But with the tragedy of Europe before our eyes; with women and children perishing by the thousand; with a volume of discontent growing and surging among every nationality, England, always the world’s hope in matters of practical justice, seems incapable of rousing herself to action worthy of her own great tradition. Instead of some fine and generous appreciation of the world’s woes, she looks on dully and from afar.

America has for the moment withdrawn from the European chaos. Her reasons for doing so are intelligible, but the result has been a disaster for the rest of the world. It is not a question, as so many Americans think, of a desire to exploit the better financial position of the United States. It is because America with many faults and crudities has a driving power of idealism behind her—the same motive force which brought her into the war. Some American business men and supporters of the great financial interests have sought—as is the habit of their kind—to exploit the post-war situation to their own profit. As against this must be set qualities of a very different character among the mass of the people. America’s absence from the European council-chamber involves the loss of a great influence at once restraining and constructive. We cannot measure fully as yet the infinite damage caused by her withdrawal from the task of Reconstruction. We know, however, that no blow since the Peace has been so severe. America was particularly fortunate in some of the representatives sent to Europe during the war—men of the highest capacity and honour. Through her absence every undesirable force or principle has gathered weight. Conversely every force working for good has been weakened.

The rest of the world looks on in an attitude as helpless as that of the former combatants, as month by month the shattered fabric of European life sags yet wider. The post-war chaos appears so complete that men turn from it in despair. Moral disillusion and weariness have their counterparts in recklessness and wild extravagance. There is a sense of an approaching Twilight of the Gods; of a collapse of the foundations of society. Therefore let us eat, drink, and be merry, on the brink of the chasm though it be, before the darkness swallows us up.

How is it that a war fought for principles and ideals so clear and so noble as those which animated us at the outset of the struggle can have resulted in a condition of practical moral bankruptcy? Of that moral bankruptcy the Treaty of Versailles is the sign and witness. On the plane of practical politics it may be said that the world could have survived the war, but it is doubtful whether it can survive the Peace. Yet the Peace only registers the sickness which has invaded our souls. Indeed, from one aspect it may be asserted that the present situation, dark and threatening though it be, is not devoid of consolation of a lofty and austere character. The moral bankruptcy which has overtaken the world is in itself the most august testimony to the inexorable truth of moral principle. Because the light in the spirit of man has burned so low, we are able to estimate what darkness falls when the lamp is untrimmed. The very chaos we deplore is the result of outraged moral laws, neglect of which brings a sure Nemesis in its train. Just in so far as the world has forsaken abiding standards of justice, truth, and mercy, the world has been stricken down. We are perishing to-day owing to failures in principle, and health can only return when principle is no longer flouted but resumes its reign over men’s souls. The tricks and turns of an opportunist policy cannot stem the rising flood of restlessness and disgust. The world grows daily more sick of men who have not sufficient character to make their cleverness tolerable. Thus viewed, our present confusion is fraught with profound spiritual significance.

In this, despite grave present peril, lies the chance of salvation. History has never known so great and so terrible a testimony to the inexorable character of moral law, and the reality of Divine Truth which it is death to challenge. Docet umbra, and in the darkness which has fallen, we who stand in the shadow may learn anew of the vision which shines behind all earth-drawn clouds; and so, may be, lay firmer hold on those forgotten truths which, alike to men and nations, bring peace at the last. If even now the better side of human nature will rally to the task of rescue, the future may yet be saved. The terrible sufferings of those who have fallen by the way cannot be made good. But if the nations will rouse themselves to make a determined moral effort, any repetition of such sufferings may be checked.

The greatest and gravest charge which can be brought against Germany is not so much that she killed men’s bodies and laid waste their houses and lands, as that she has poisoned the soul of Europe. The evil spirit let loose by the Prussian theory of life has reacted throughout the world. It has darkened counsel and silenced the voice of charity and moderation. Not to be dragged down to the level of the person who has wronged you is the hardest of all moral tests. It was one which proved too hard for the conquerors in this war. The Peace was bound to have been very stern towards Germany and very exacting in its demands. Severity was inherent in the situation. Wrongs had been committed which called for judgment; balances had to be redressed. The more necessary was it, in view of these stern measures, to adhere strictly to principles of justice and honour in our treatment of Germany; to give neither history nor a defeated foe any justification for the charge that in the hour of victory we cast behind us principles for which we fought.

The degree to which the Terms of Peace violated both the letter and spirit of conditions laid down in the Armistice is a blot on the Treaty which must be painful to all honourable men. The Allies would have been within their rights in insisting on the unconditional surrender of Germany. But conditions having been permitted, they should have been adhered to. Mr. Lloyd George and President Wilson had indicated on various occasions that peace made with a democratic Germany would be of a different character from a peace made with the Hohenzollerns still in power. But Germany, having rid herself of her Emperor and of her former Government, found that the treatment meted out to the new Republic differed in no particular from what would have been justifiable had the Emperor remained on the throne. The conscience of the world has been troubled by these things, and by an uneasy sense of undertakings given but not fulfilled.

Those of us who see in the Peace a supreme failure in constructive statesmanship do not take that view because we are pacifists or have some sentimental wish “to be kind to Germany.” So long as the issue of the war hung in doubt it was our duty to make war to the last man and the last shilling. With the evil spirit dominating Imperial Germany, neither truce nor parley was possible. The effort frequently made in pacifist circles to represent the war as a general dog-fight, for which all the nations involved have a common responsibility, is not only bad history but bad morality. Victory creates, however, a wholly new situation. War, in certain terrible cases, is the necessary prelude to a settlement. But of itself it settles nothing, any more than an operation essential to check the spread of disease is a natural or healthy process. The surgeon’s knife is merely a means to an end—the recovery of normal life by a normal and healthy body. The knife is not kept flourished permanently over the patient’s head or turned periodically in the wound.

The great charge against the Peace is its failure to envisage a normal and healthy life for Europe. Our quarrel against its provisions is that they are in many cases fully as short-sighted and as lacking in imagination as what Prussians themselves might have evolved. The precedents of Brest-Litovsk, at which we raised our hands in justifiable horror, are not agreeable ones to follow. The fatal flaw of the Peace is that it does not look beyond the period of punishment and reparation to an ultimate pacification of Europe. It lays down no principles for the establishment of good relations between nations. Its economic provisions are a nightmare calculated to lay a strangle-hold on any possible recovery of European trade and commerce. With a world crying out for goods and that increased production which can alone bring about a drop in prices, the Peace Treaty is directed to keeping one of the greatest producers, namely Germany, in chains, while a group of little states, erected as military buffers of the most futile character, are allowed to distract themselves and their neighbours by the erection of tariff walls behind which they carry on crazy forms of economic guerilla warfare.

Let us admit that the difficulties of the Peace were quite enormous and that mistakes and blunders were inevitable. Criticism is roused not so much by the practical provisions of the Treaty as by the general spirit animating it. It is, in effect, a peace of revenge uninspired by one generous gesture as regards the future. It is a peace of tired old men with their eyes fixed on the hatreds and animosities of the past, and their minds obsessed by the territorial jealousies of the old diplomacy. Consequently it has outraged and disgusted the young generation just stepping from school and college into the political arena. Youth is generous and impulsive; it is the age of chivalry and high ideals. The younger men and women ask what this Treaty is doing for the future, at what point it is binding up the wounds of Europe, what contribution it makes towards creating that “new world” of which politicians discoursed so eloquently. The rising generation has a right to demand an answer to these questions. It is their future which is at stake in the matter. The provisions of the Peace are burthens laid upon their shoulders. Naturally they are concerned with the contents of the load. But from no direction comes any satisfactory reply to these inquiries, only the dull echo returned by barriers of hatred and negation.

Yet another consequence results from this state of affairs, the seriousness of which has not, I think, been fully grasped. The failures of democratic statesmen, so called, in this matter of the Peace have jeopardised the whole principle of democratic government. “If this is the best that the statesmen of the three great democracies can produce, then away with such a sham and failure as democracy has proved itself to be. Let us try something else.” This spirit is stirring in many quarters. It leads young minds, at once eager and disappointed, to explore the alternatives of anarchism, direct action, Bolshevism, and the rest. We may deplore the direction in which their ideas are moving. Let politicians in power recognise, however, that this spirit of revolt is rooted in the vast failures of the old diplomacy. Is there yet time to recognise the hopeless dead end into which we have blundered and to retrace our steps along a better way? The first condition is to purge our minds from some of the illusions which run riot among the men who control the machine. The peace of Europe cannot be secured by any variation of the old tortuous adjustments concerned with the balance of power. Strategical frontiers, military dispositions, the creation of buffer states, leave the problem exactly where it stood. Neither will the effort to reduce a feared and hated enemy to a condition perilously akin to that of economic servitude dispel the menace of a future appeal to arms. No nation can lay enduring shackles on the life of another, as the history of Germany from Jena to Leipzig proves conclusively. But as that suggestive period also shows, the effort to oppress and dominate, so far from crushing the spirit of a people, rouses it to the highest point of effort and endeavour. The German poets of the Liberation period have sung in vain if they have not taught that lesson to an unheeding world.

The peaceful relations of nations cannot be achieved through the strategy of force and the tactics of hatred. A change of heart, a new moral orientation are essential if the world is not once again to become a shambles. Such a spirit can only permeate the existing welter little by little. We cannot afford to take risks with the ruthless and wicked people who in many instances control the destinies of nations. But the touchstone of statesmanship at the present time is the degree to which it is helping or it is hindering the forces which make for sanity and reconciliation; the degree to which it clears away barriers or helps to erect them. Nations, like individuals, can only live and grow through what is highest and best in themselves. Further, unless nations are prepared to treat each other with some measure of confidence and goodwill, and to have some sort of faith in each other’s good intentions, the moral chaos remains insoluble.

It is my earnest wish in this matter to write with complete understanding and sympathy of the position of France. French fears regarding the future are largely responsible for the tone and temper of the Peace. The fact is so well known that I cannot feel any useful purpose is served by a refusal frankly to face the issues involved. The Entente, if it is to flourish, must draw its strength from truth and candour. It cannot live on shams and make-believes. The better mind of England is disturbed increasingly over the policy pursued by the Entente, and feels that the influence of France is dragging us along a path remote from the traditional views of the British democracy. We must recognise this fact and face its implications, if sooner or later a point of sharp collision is to be avoided between the two countries. France and England are united by ties of a sacred and abiding character. Side by side have they upheld the torch of liberty while the foundations of the world rocked. The blood of their sons has been poured out on hundreds of battlefields in a common defence of liberty. The courage and the fortitude of France during the struggle was an example and an inspiration to the whole Alliance. Why are we conscious, therefore, to-day of so heavy a fall in all those values which made France heroic during the war? Again we must bring patience and understanding to a situation fraught with possibilities so grave of future trouble.

France to-day is dominated by two sentiments, one is hatred, the other is fear. Both are evil counsellors, both are destroyers of life. France through fear is pursuing a policy the only result of which can be to make the confirmation of her fears inevitable. Now, it is not for us English while recognising these facts to pass any sort of censorious judgment on them. Had we suffered like France, had we endured what she has been called upon to endure, in all probability our own spirit would have been even more black and more bitter. Such powers of detachment as we may possess do not imply the least merit on our part. It is only because relatively we have suffered less that we can afford possibly to be more broad and more generous in our outlook. France for the last fifty years has lived under the shadow of a nightmare. Enticed into war in 1870 by the devilish skill of Bismarck, she was forced to drink to the full of the German cup of humiliation. Marvellous though her economic and political recovery after the war, she could feel no security about her eastern frontier. The aggressive character of German diplomacy cast a deepening shadow on her life. Periodically she was threatened; periodically she was insulted. Finally came a climax of horror—the invasion of her soil, the devastation of town and country, the agony of four and a half years of a war unparalleled in its ghastliness. Little wonder, therefore, that France sees red all the time and that she demands an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

I often think that if in the course of the war it had so happened that a strip of German soil near the Rhine had been laid waste, it might in the long run have promoted the peace of Europe. I do not say this from any desire to destroy German homes or cause suffering to German women and children. But one of the difficulties in dealing with France to-day is that she feels that her wounds gape wider than those of any other nation. She is haunted by the horror of her own experience, to which no enemy country affords a parallel. Her devastated areas do not, so to speak, cancel out. Had they cancelled out, even in a limited measure, she would have lost something of the sense of unique and peculiar outrage which fills France to-day with a bitterness as of death. Let me repeat it is not for us to pass any censorious judgment on this attitude. Unlike France, we are not up against the fence of a land frontier with an hereditary foe on the other side. But we fail in our duty if in a spirit of entire friendliness and understanding we do not urge her to consider where this policy is leading.

The quarrel between Germany and France is a very old story. It did not start, as many people imagine carelessly, in 1870. Long before that date a barrier of bitter memories had already been piled up between the two countries. Germany too has had her grievances, heavy grievances, in the past against France. Louis XIV. carried fire and sword through the Rhineland and Palatinate during the wars of the Spanish Succession. His generals left an imperishable memory of outrage. The Napoleonic occupation laid a hand of iron subsequently on the German people. Read the poets of the Liberation period, Arndt, Rückert, Körner, Schenkendorf, and realise how deep that iron bit into the soul of the nation. Travel among the Rhineland towns and study their history. It is one long record of French occupation and destruction either in the seventeenth or early nineteenth century—Mainz, the cathedral used as a magazine and barracks; Cologne, horses stabled in the cathedral nave; Speyer, town and cathedral ravaged with fire and sword by the generals of Louis XIV., ruffians who exhumed and scattered to the winds the bones of eight German emperors; Worms, reduced in 1689 to a smouldering heap of ruins; Aachen, Bonn, Coblenz, Baden, all with bitter memories of military conquest and occupation.

If I draw attention to these old unhappy far-off things it is not from any desire to rake gratuitously among painful memories of the past. But the German attitude towards France can never be understood unless due weight is given to these black and bitter pages in their earlier relations. France must face candidly the historical truth that Prussian militarism came into being as a reply to the aggressions first of Louis XIV., then of Napoleon. The sins of older generations of French rulers have been visited on innocent heads, but the sins were there. The memory of French tyranny in former years was the driving force which welded the German states together. To the average German 1870 appeared the vindication of his national honour, the signal proof that the humiliations of the Napoleonic period were wiped out. Once again the old coil of evil is seen unfolding itself in a monotonous succession of wrongs done and revenge exacted, the revenge creating new wrongs which in turn lead to further strife.

Are we prepared to weave yet further sequences of this disastrous character? Or shall the spirit of man rise up and say the coil must be broken?

It is this problem that has to be faced with both tact and candour so far as the French are concerned. We sympathise to the full with their sufferings and their wrongs. All that is best, however, in the British democracy will neither sympathise with nor support policies which if pursued to their logical ends can only work fresh havoc for Europe. It is strange that the French, after their bitter experience of 1870, seem unable to apply lessons wholly learnt by themselves as to the strength of national feeling. It is impossible to stifle the spirit of a people whatever it may be. Germany failed completely in her effort to crush France. It is no less hopeless for France to think that she can crush Germany. Yet at bottom the destruction of Germany is the aim of the Chauvinists, who have considerable influence at the moment in the direction of French policy. For people of this type the European situation is the same to-day as it was in 1912. It is as though the years 1914-1918 had not happened. The German nightmare oppresses them as much as it has ever done. They still envisage Germany as a great military power whose existence is one long menace to the security of France. They want to see Germany crippled beyond the hope of restoration, though with an entire lack of logic they also want Germany to pay them large sums of money. Many French soldiers and politicians feel it is a great mistake to miss the present golden opportunity for making, as they think, a complete end of a formidable enemy. Among them are men who would welcome any pretext which might justify the further crushing of Germany. Theory reacts of course on practice. The actual policy pursued in the Occupied Area is often irritating and exasperating in the highest degree. Feeling between the Germans and the French has to my knowledge grown more sore and more bitter during the last year. But pinpricks will not produce the indemnity, and an atmosphere of general exasperation does not promote the best interests of France. Judged by rough-and-ready standards of expediency, it ought to be clear that less than forty millions of people cannot coerce indefinitely more than sixty millions of tough, hard-working men and women. This blunt truth governs the present situation. Such a policy if pursued is bound to fail. But before it breaks down in the turmoil of another war it may extinguish the last hope of saving European civilisation. Europe presents to-day common needs and common problems. It will recover as a whole or collapse as a whole. No illusion can be more fatal than the theory that the safety and prosperity of one member of the European family can be secured by the dismemberment and destruction of another. Statesmanship, while securing for France necessary material guarantees of safety, should have sought to win her round to a wiser appreciation of the principles on which her future security must rest. Similarly as regards Germany; while exacting adequate reparation and reducing her militarists to impotence, statesmanship should no less seek to encourage the growth of a new temper among her people which will, by making them decent and responsible members of the European family, render any repetition of past horrors impossible.

Lamentable indeed was the failure of the Peace Conference to make any contribution to these fundamental principles. The Peace Treaty registers accurately the violences and hatreds of the war. To the creation of a better state of affairs in the future it makes no contribution of any kind. Whatever the attitude of France, the moral failure of England and America as regards the exercise of any restraining influence is far more culpable. The collapse of President Wilson, a man of high ideals but without the power of dealing with facts needful to give them practical effect, is one of the most tragic chapters in history. Mr. Lloyd George, gifted as he is with vision and imagination, could have thrown the light of his indisputable qualities had he so willed over the chaos of Europe. Unhappily he became involved in a sordid chapter of domestic politics, the consequences of which hung round his neck like a millstone. The present chaos of Europe is in no small degree a consequence of the General Election of December 1918 and the temper and policies it inculcated. The British nation was rushed on that occasion with fatal results to the cause of permanent peace. The Peace Conference met at Paris in an atmosphere charged with passion, and passion weighted the scales at every critical issue. Meanwhile the democracies of the world, impotent to control peace negotiations the spirit and policy of which became increasingly unacceptable to all thinking people, looked on helplessly while the unwieldy vessel of the Conference, buffeted first by one influence and then by another, drifted on a stormy sea of opportunism towards the rocks of strife. As for the result, it was well denounced as the Peace of Dragon’s Teeth by Mr. J. L. Garvin, who throughout the tests of war and peace devoted his eloquence and great powers of idealism to the cause first of victory and then of European appeasement.

The Treaty as it stands has sown the world with fresh discord, and ultimately can lead to nothing but repudiation and revenge. Still further, the Treaty as it stands is unworkable. Already it shows signs of breaking down under the weight of its own contradictions. By demanding too much it bids fair to create a situation in which nothing will be obtainable. It is not business to tell a bankrupt he must pay thirty shillings in the pound, and at the same time sit on his head so as to make it impossible for him to earn thirty pence. If a bankrupt is to discharge his debts, he must be put into a position to earn. If he is to be loaded with chains, that spectacle may have its own satisfaction, but it will not produce money on the credit side. A hungry bankrupt Germany cannot work to pay off the indemnity on which France has just claim. If Europe crumbles further; if Bolshevism finds a new recruiting ground in the anger and despair of a whole people—where is France likely to stand in this matter of payment?

We must in common fairness recognise how serious are the difficulties even of a well-intentioned German Government in carrying out the demands it has to meet. The people as a whole are inexperienced politically. The nation has had no training in self-government. It has been run in the past by a highly efficient bureaucracy saturated in autocratic and Bismarckian traditions. To-day the old machinery of government is in ruins. We cannot expect that Germany with a wave of the wand can suddenly produce public men and civil servants of the type with which we are familiar. The cry that the government is in the hands of men “steeped in militarism” is far from untrue. The real problem, however, is to find men of any sort of training or experience in government work outside the close ring of Prussianism. Inevitably the public has to rely, anyway for the present, on officials trained in the old theory that a lie was a virtue so long as it served the State.

From this grave disadvantage there is no immediate escape, and the circumstance calls for special vigilance and care in our relations with the German official classes. We can, however, help or hinder the growth of another spirit. In so far as we support a democratically constituted German Government and give it some encouragement and consideration, we shall tend to produce men of a new type. But if these early steps in democratic government are at each stage to be associated with rebuffs and humiliations, we play straight, as I have pointed out in an earlier chapter, into the hands of the military party. The old gang, though they dare not raise their heads at the moment, are a compact body among themselves, and desire nothing so ardently as the failure of constitutional government in Germany. We cannot expect German mentality to be changed in a night. The new forces must be given time and space in which to develop.

Further, they must be given encouragement. The situation in Germany to-day is in many respects dark and difficult. The reactionary forces are entrenched strongly in more than one direction. We must not ignore the evil influence of some tens of thousands of embittered and irreconcilable soldiers and of certain officials of the old régime, whose careers have been broken and who have nothing to hope from any constitution acceptable to the democratic mind of Europe. Again, the old fire-eating doctrines are still to the fore at many centres of education and have an unfortunate influence on the student life—a serious fact borne out by much evidence. Thirdly, there is the danger of the irrecoverable rifle in the back garden—an impossible administrative problem, as we have found to our cost in Ireland. Undesirable factors of this character will have proportionate weight in Germany just so far as the spirit of unrest and despair spreads through the people. They can only be reduced to insignificance through the establishment of an ordered and settled government which is in a position to maintain a decent level of life for the nation, and a life consistent with a fair measure of national self-respect.

The revision of the Peace Treaty on lines which will bring it into harmony with enduring principles of justice and right is the crying need of the hour. A practical point in connection with the present situation should not be overlooked. The Germans know as well as we do that modifications of the Treaty are inevitable. So long, however, as the present unhappy instrument holds the field, the doubtful clauses offer a most undesirable scope for duplicity and intrigue. The men of the old tradition to whom I have just referred are experts in fishing in troubled waters. They have sufficient skill to play off Allied scruples and hesitations one against another. What we should aim at is a Treaty just and reasonable in its demands, stripped of provisions which involve exasperating administrative problems. Above all, the Treaty should be revised to command the moral assent of the Allied democracies, an assent wholly lacking in the case of the Treaty of Versailles. Then the provisions should be enforced rigidly, and the German Government made plainly to understand that there is to be neither humbug nor shirking about their fulfilment. There cannot be two opinions about Germany making the fullest material restitution in her power for injuries done. Opinions may and do differ fundamentally as to the manner and spirit in which these claims should be put forward.

If politicians and statesmen turn a deaf ear to the cry of a world in distress and to a growing demand that the policies pursued should be reasonable and constructive, the voice of the people themselves swelling in volume bids fair to overwhelm all triflers with peace. For despite the bluster of the fire-eaters and a Press which encourages their empty violence, the world is sick of blood and strife. Germany has suffered such a defeat as history has never known. Sixty millions of people, however, virile, disciplined, hard-working, cannot be obliterated from the map. Greatly though certain zealots may desire the complete annihilation of the German tribes, vapourings of this kind are remote from the realm of practical politics. The statesmanship which at the moment haunts the Chancellories of Europe would not appear to be of very high quality. But statesmanship of an order infinitely higher might well recoil appalled from such problems as would result from any general collapse of the German Government and people.

A far-sighted policy, which while never failing in fairness is withal generous and reasonable, is as the poles removed from that of a weak sentimentality which refuses to face the difficult facts of the present situation. The withdrawal of any great nation from the urgent task of work and production means loss and detriment to the world at large. Hence the need to let Germany both eat and work; more, the need to help her start afresh. She lies a beaten and prostrate nation to-day. We may push her over the brink and so precipitate new catastrophes. Or without sentiment and without illusion we may take a longer view; we may direct our policy towards ultimate ends of appeasement, towards the establishment of a saner and a better Europe unhaunted by the menace of vast aggressive forces, towards the recovery by Germany herself of her old birthright of music, poetry, and philosophy bartered by her for evil dreams of world power and domination. That new order cannot be founded on any basis of enduring hatred. We cannot offer the ideal of the League of Nations with the one hand, and policies which resolve themselves into starvation and oppression with the other. The policies are incompatible, and we must choose between them.

The miserable suggestion frequently advanced, that as a victorious Germany would have ground us to powder, we should do to her as she would have done to us, cannot be sustained for a moment. Is our policy to be directed by German standards and influenced by German principles? All along we have proclaimed loudly that the war was fought so that the spirit and the principles of Germany should no longer terrorise the world. To adopt her principles, even in some modified form, is to give her in defeat a victory lost by her in the field. Our moral pretensions in this struggle have been very high ones, and moral pretensions are intolerable unless some effort is made to live up to them.

Not all the dark and sordid happenings which wait inevitably on five years of world conflagration, not all the dragging in the mire of many a noble idea, should make us forget the great principles of liberty and justice which drew us originally into the war. It was no idle phrase that England staked everything for an ideal when the wrong done to Belgium brought her into the field. At no moment in her history has she risen to moral heights so great as when she stepped forth in August 1914 to vindicate the cause of the oppressed. The principles to which she consecrated herself in that supreme moment of testing demand a service no less inexorable from us to-day, though to hold by them steadily in the dark and stony ways of peace is proving, as we all know to our cost, a test of endurance greater far than that of the actual conflict. Yet surely failure at this point is to fail our dead most miserably—the men who died with the light of a great vision in their eyes: that vision of a world purged from evil through their sacrifice. No miracles of leadership won the war. It was won by the grit and by the endurance of the great mass of the British peoples. And where statesmanship has failed, we look to the rank and file of the nation to win the peace. It rests with our countrymen to see that there is no further deepening of the ruts of hatred and mutual ignorance, for what England wills in this matter is decisive as regards the future.

And France—France who was in such a special sense the soul of the war? Is it too much to ask that France, despite her sufferings and sacrifices, should brace herself for one supreme effort, nobler than all which have gone before—the effort to make herself greater than the wrong done to her? Then would her triumph over the dark and evil forces which brought about the war be supreme indeed. France who means so much to the mind of Europe, who has given to it eternal principles of truth and liberty—will not France in this matter rise to the level of her own heroic stature?

The established democracies of the world have in these troubled times to hold up each others arms. So long as the great Republic of the West stands aloof, the chain of brotherhood and common effort is broken at a vital point. The darkness is greater, the task infinitely more hard, because she has withdrawn her companionship from what should have been a united purpose. The intervention of America led to the complete overthrow of Germany. Without her great resources flung on the Allied side the war must have had a very different end resulting in compromise, not victory. We appreciate her difficulties; we do not presume to dictate. We would, however, beg her to remember she too has responsibilities as regards the burthen of Europe. But though the action of the United States may have made the goal of European appeasement more remote, more difficult to attain, the goal itself is clear.

The Watch on the Rhine is of value just so far as it helps to clear our minds as to the true objectives that we are seeking. The soldiers have done their work well and truly in the war. Their task accomplished, its results have now passed largely into other hands. Our unworthiness and unfitness to carry so great a responsibility are but too painfully apparent. Yet the responsibility is there. The dead have in special measure left a sacrifice to be perfected. The torch fell lighted from their hands. Supreme shame would it be if it suffers extinction through the sordid ambitions and mean desires of men who live because other men have died. The threat of moral bankruptcy, real as it is, can only be averted through a steady devotion to ideal ends. Those ideal ends have been sung by one of our younger poets in words which, to me at least, sum up the faith I have endeavoured haltingly to express as regards the future:

THE END