out in detail, such an international control must therefore be worked out.  The manifest solution of the problem of the German colonies in Africa is neither to return them to her nor deprive her of them, but to give her a share in the pooled general control of mid-Africa.  In that way she can be deprived of all power for political mischief in Africa without humiliation or economic injury.  In that way, too, we can head off—­and in no other way can we head off—­the power for evil, the power of developing quarrels inherent in “imperialisms” other than German.

But has the reader any assurance that this sane solution of the African problem has the support of the Allied Governments?  At best he has only a vague persuasion.  And consider how the matter looks “over there.”  The German Government assures the German people that the Allies intend to cut off Germany from the African supply of raw material.  That would mean the practical destruction of German economic life.  It is something far more vital to the mass of Germans than any question of Belgium or Alsace-Lorraine.  It is, therefore, one of the ideas most potent in nerving the overstrained German people to continue their fight.  Why are we, and why are the German people, not given some definite assurance in this matter?  Given reparation in Europe, is Germany to be allowed a fair share in the control and trade of a pooled and neutralized Central Africa?  Sooner or later we must come to some such arrangement.  Why not state it plainly now?

A second question is equally essential to any really permanent settlement, and it is one upon which these eloquent but unsatisfactory mouthpieces of ours turn their backs with an equal resolution, and that is the fate of the Ottoman Empire.  What in plain English are we up to there?  Whatever happens, that Humpty Dumpty cannot be put back as it was before the war.  The idea of the German imperialist, the idea of our own little band of noisy but influential imperialist vulgarians, is evidently a game of grab, a perilous cutting up of these areas into jostling protectorates and spheres of influence, from which either the Germans or the Allies (according to the side you are on) are to be viciously shut out.  On such a basis this war is a war to the death.  Neither Germany, France, Britain, Italy, nor Russia can live prosperously if its trade and enterprise is shut out from this cardinally important area.  There is, therefore, no alternative, if we are to have a satisfactory permanent pacification of the world, but local self-development in these regions under honestly conceived international control of police and transit and trade.  Let it be granted that that will be a difficult control to organize.  None the less it has to be attempted.  It has to be attempted because there is no other way of peace.  But once that conception has been clearly formulated, a second great motive why Germany should continue fighting will have gone.