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free the seas is easily intelligible. She is a Continental power, which even in war-time can communicate freely with such of her neighbours as are not hostile to her. If she choose she can exchange commodities with Russia or Austria, and there is none to hinder her. At the same time she can prevent, without trouble, our access to these countries. And we hear no vague talk about the freedom of the land. We, on the other hand, depend for our approach to all and sundry upon the sea. That is our element, and if we lose control of it our life is at an end. Germany does not permit us to travel across her borders when we are at war, in search of such commodities as we need to make our guns and to fill our shells. And we, in our turn, relying upon our Fleet, forbid the Germans to replenish their empty stores from the granaries and factories oversea. In peace-time the ocean has hitherto been free and open to all, and it will be free and open again to the Germans when after a long boycott they have paid their offences against sea law. And it has been free and open because the English have freed it from piracy and have kept it decently and honestly policed. If to-day we surrendered the supremacy which we have won by the heroism of Hawke and Jervis and Nelson, we should either sink into a second-rate power or we should be forced to begin the next war by tearing up a sorap of paper. We intend to do neither of these things, and if, in Admiral Sims'

words, "the British Grand Fleet is the foundation-stone of the cause of the whole of the Allies," we know that those Allies would not, if they could, at the request of a beaten Germany, disturb us in the possession of a power which has saved the civilised world from slavery.

Meanwhile the Allied Armies and the Allied Fleets are accomplishing the work of emancipation. The Germans are retreating everywhere before the hammer blows of Marshal Fooh and the united Armies under his command. The friends of Germany are ready to make the best terms they can to escape from a battlefield on which defeat is certain. We are faced by one simple duty: to fight the Germans until they surrender unconditionally. We want no discussion with them, no interchanges of views, no bargaining of this advantage against that. All the advantages are ours, and at the proper time we shall make the best use of them we can. We cannot parley with the Germans, beoause we are unable to believe in their good faith. There is no reason why we should show them the slightest tenderness, because they have proved themselves savages, unrestrained by the laws of war or decency. As they are driven back we discover day by day fresh atrocities which they have com. mitted. The horrible crimes of which they have been guilty cannot be punished by conversations. The only peace which is possible is a diotated peace. The only terms to which the Allies can agree will be the terms of

justice, untempered by mercy. A victorious Germany, as she herself has said, would have left us only our eyes to weep with. We know what she would have meted out to others, and with what measure they meted let it be measured to them again.

Stricken in the field, the Germans fall back upon a species of ounning which will deceive nobody. Believing with some reason that idealism flourishes more luxuriantly at a distance of three thousand miles than in devastated and enslaved France, the Germans go whining for peace to President Wilson. Thus they hoped, if they miss peace, at least to divide America from the Allies. A vain hope, which has been speedily disappointed. Indeed, it seems to us that far too much importance was attached to what was no more than an exchange of personal views. President Wilson spoke for himself alone; he met with half-hearted support in his own country, and he finally convinced the most sanguine of the Germans that they could expect little support from him. But the mere fact that he spoke for himself alone suggests that the sooner the Allies establish a united committee, whose duty it shall be to agree upon terms of peace, the better will it be for our security in the future, our serenity in the present time. We have fought side by side; side by side, therefore, we must diotate terms to the Boche, and decide what punishments are adequate for the manifold crimes that he has committed.

The reception in America of

the President's answer to the German request for an armistice, and of Prince Max of Baden's rejoinder, is the best proof that Germany's trick failed completely. Mr Taft perceived at once the Boche's insincerity, and also "the very general" character of the President's fourteen points, which alone would keep a conference busy for months. Nor did Senator Lodge harbour any illusions. "Mr M'Adoo and some of the Press," said he, "speak of the German Note, if authentic, as a complete surrender. It is nothing of the kind. It is not surrender, and it is highly conditional. If we accept the Note, it means that Germany has failed to conquer the world at this moment, and that we have lost the war." But it is Mr Roosevelt who spoke with the voice which will be most warmly welcomed in Europe. "I greatly regret," said he, "that the President has entered into these negotiations, and I trust they will be stopped. We have announced that we will not submit to a negotiated peace, and under such conditions to begin negotiations is bad faith with ourselves and our Allies."

We are continually being told that we cannot make peace with the Hohenzollerns, and that we have no quarrel with the German people. Both these statements are meaningless, and the sooner we cease to repeat them parrot-wise the better equipped shall we be for the drawing up efficiently of the terms which we mean to impose. As we are resolved upon a dictated peace,

our

it does not matter very the popular voice, has held much to whom we dietate it. every possible opinion during And while we have every the war, and he was very right to insist upon the careful, until he S&W the heaviest penalties, while we approach of disaster, not to have every right to insure say a single word in dispraise ourselves against another at- of the German military leaders. tack upon the liberties of He boasted that it was the world, not even conquest war," that "we willed it," and permits us to say how and when he protesta, as he proby whom Germany shall be tests to-day, that the German governed in the future. The people shall not do penance for Germans, after the war, will the crimes of a few, he talks govern themselves as seems nonsense. In brief, the truth to them best. They will be could not have been more unable to heap up fresh clearly stated than it has been armaments, because the in- stated by Mr Balfour. "I demnities which they will be wish I could think that these forced to pay will give them atrocious orimes," said he, neither leisure nor a balance 'were the issues of a small, at their banks. But if they dominant, military class, . . . do not think that human but it is incredible that crimes wisdom and human salvation like these, perpetrated in the depend upon the erection of light of day, known to all manneat little ballot-boxes in the kind, condemned from one end streets of Berlin, let them be of the civilised world to the free to reject an artifice which other, should go on being rehas boded small good to those peated month after month of who have boasted about it. four years of embittered warfare, if they did not commend themselves to the population which commits them."

The other statement that we have no quarrel with the German people is obviously absurd. With whom, then, have we a quarrel? "Brutes they were," said Mr Balfour, "when they began the war, and, as far as we can judge, brutes they remain at the present moment." The whole people has shared, without a protest, what it believed to be the triumph of its rulers. It must share, without extenuation, the sentence which shall be pronounced against them all. If the people had objected in the hour of victory to its rulers' brutalities, it could have made its objections heard. Herr Harden, whom we may accept as an echo of

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If any one is so simple as to believe that Germany is chastened, let him read General Baron von Freytag - Loringhoven's new treatise, entitled 'A Nation in Arms Militia?' Here there is no disguise, no pretence that a League of Free Nations will abolish war. General von Freytag is already looking towards the next conflict, and doing his best to solve the problem of ultimate victory. He is a realist who places facts above sentiments, and he does his best to discover by what means his country can best be strengthened for the future

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His book is a piece of close argument, and withal a vivid summary of military history. He begins, in true German fashion, by oiting Heraclitus's definition of war as the begetter of all things. "It cannot be otherwise," says he. "Such a World-War as the present, quite apart from its other effects, must produce a very marked quickening of the intellectual qualities." There is here no condemnation of "militarism.' So he praises the unremitting industry of the German army, in which, he says, the wish expressed by Treitschke that the defeat of 1806 should be "ineffaceable from the memory of all future generations a personal injury, an admonition upon all to vigilance, humility, and loyalty," found its fulfilment. Such was the temper of the German army in 1914. Such will it be after this war is over, save that it will add to its memory of 1806 the memory of 1918, unless we do what Napoleon against his better judgment refrained from doing -put Germany in such a position of inferiority that the memory will be too bitter to inspire the hope of vengeance.

General von Freytag, at any rate, has made up his mind that after the war Germany must, and shall, be "a nation trained in arms." He proves by a large array of instances the failure of a militia. We do not know whether the final defeat of his own country by hastily raised levies will persuade him to change his opinion. But when he composed his discourse, his mind was made

up.

He admits that the world - embracing theories of 1815 did not constitute any immediate danger. "Europe had just struck to earth,' he writes, "by her united forces, the tyrant who had kept her in thraldom. It was permissible then to dally with thoughts of a militia. At the present day, in view of Germany's central position and of the mighty worldpolitical interests which she has at stake, it is not permissible. Only too clearly has it been revealed that our safety in the future can be guaranteed only by a firmly knit, trained national army, not by a loose militia." General von Freytag, being a German, is deficient in humour, or he would not talk of "tyrants or "thraldoms." tention which he has for the future is plain. If he can, he will convert Germany once again into a vast nation in arms. And if his countrymen pretend to enter into a league of nations, we may be sure that they will do what Soharnhorst did in 1806-employ once more the Krümper system, should the nation in arms be denied them, and burst upon a pacific world with a highlytrained, well-equipped army.

But the in

It is plain, therefore, that if we are to check the military ambition of Germany, something more solid than a League of Nations will be necessary. We hear much of this League. A better stimulus to illusory eloquence has not been found for many a year. The League of Nations is not a policy, it is a superstition; and, like other

superstitions, it has little mean- danger which confronts
ing, and should have no influ-
ence at all upon our agreements
of peace. It is a thing which
we are not permitted to argue
about. We must accept it
as it is given to us, and "no
questions asked." But not one
of its champions has yet tried
to explain how the laws passed
by the League of Nations are
to be enforced. Many speeches
have been made by Viscount
Grey of Fallodon and others,
and they amount precisely to
nothing. We hear a vast
deal about "an economic boy-
cott," and we know that if
Viscount Grey of Fallodon has
his way, there will be Free
Trade all round. Again, we
are told that after the war
there will be disarmament, and
Viscount Grey, with his san-
guine temper, suggests that
Germany will be the first
power asked to disarm. But,
we ask in honest simplicity,
how shall you compel Ger-
many to disarm? When
Prussia lay at the feet of
Napoleon, he insisted that
Prussia should disarm. And
Prussia took his warning so
nearly to heart, that she pre-
tended to disarm in 1806, and,
as we have said, in 1813 had
an army large enough to win
the battle of Leipzig. The
Allies are not so strong and
are not so vigilant as Napoleon.
How, therefore, shall they keep
an efficient check upon the
growing forces of Germany?

A greater contrast to General von Freytag could not be found than Viscount Grey. The German is a stern realist; the Englishman is a tepid idealist. And the Englishman's idealism is the greatest

us

to-day. The Germans, completely defeated, are like the drowning man who will catch hold of any plank that presents itself. They want raw materials, and they will join any league which will provide them with what they want. They will take all they can, and will give nothing. And our sentimentalists will welcome them, like erring brothers, to a warm embrace. Viscount Grey's strongest argument is, of course, his very proper hatred of war. He thinks that the suffering caused by the present war, and an understanding of the horrors which may overtake us in the future, will convince the world that a repetition of it must be avoided at all costs. So far, we are in complete agreement with Viscount Grey. We must avoid a repetition of the war, and we can avoid it best by keeping intact our present alliances and by resolving that never again shall we fall behind the Germans in our armaments. The policy is clear, and may easily be carried out. But it does not satisfy Viscount Grey. Before a practical method of defence he prefers the foolish dream of a league, which will never become a useful reality, and which will prove, in the hands of foolish politicians, a mere instrument of tyranny. Viscount Grey calls his league a league of free nations, we may take it for granted that he wishes to impose what is known as "democracy" upon the whole world. Even if the democratic principle were generally acknowledged as a

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