The strength of the enemy lies in his creed; not in the lands that he has ravished from his neighbours.  If his creed does not prevail, his lands will not help him.  Germany has taken lands from Belgium, Serbia, Roumania, Russia, and the rest, but unless her digestion is as strong as her appetite, she will fail to keep them.  If she is to hold them in peace, the peoples who inhabit these lands must be either exterminated or converted to the German creed.  Lands can be annexed by a successful campaign; they can be permanently conquered only by the operations of peace.  The people who survive will be a weakness to the German Empire unless they accept what they are offered, a share in the German creed.

That creed has not many natural attractions for the peoples on whom it is imposed by force.  It is an intensely patriotic creed; it insists on racial supremacy, and on unity to be achieved by violence.  Pleading and persuasion have little part in it except as instruments of deceit.  There is no use in listening to what the Germans say; they do not believe it themselves.  What they say is for others; what they do is for themselves.  While they are at war, language for them has only two uses—­to conceal their thoughts, and to deceive their enemies.

The creed of Western civilization, for which they feel nothing but contempt, and on which they will be broken, is not a simple thing, like theirs.  The words by which it is commonly expressed—­democracy, parliamentarism, individual liberty, diversity, free development—­are puzzling theoretic words, which make no instinctive appeal to the heart.  Nevertheless, we stand for growth as against order; and for life as against death.  If Germany wins this war, her system will have to be broken or to decay before growth can start again.  Must we lose even a hundred years in shaking ourselves free from the paralysis of the German nightmare?

The Germans have shown themselves strong in their unity, and strong in their willingness to make great sacrifices to preserve that unity.  No one can deny nobility to the sacrifice made by the simple-minded German soldier who dies fighting bravely for his people and his creed.  His narrowness is his strength, and makes unselfishness easier by saving his mind from question.  ‘This one thing you shall do’, his country says to him, ’fight and die for your country, so that your country and your people shall have lordship over other countries and other peoples.  You are nothing; Germany is everything.’

We who live in this island love our country with at least as deep a passion; but a creed so simple as the German creed will never do for us.  We are patriotic, but our patriotism is often overlaid and confused by a wider thought and a wider sympathy than the Germans have ever known.  Much extravagant praise has lately been given to the German power of thinking, which produces the elaborate marvels of German organization.  But this thinking is slave-thinking,