And so the discussion of the future of the overseas “empires” brings us again to the same realisation to which the discussion of nearly every great issue arising out of this war has pointed, the realisation of the imperative necessity of some great council or conference, some permanent overriding body, call it what you will, that will deal with things more broadly than any “nationalism” or “patriotic imperialism” can possibly do.  That body must come into human affairs.  Upon the courage and imagination of living statesmen it depends whether it will come simply and directly into concrete reality or whether it will materialise slowly through, it may be, centuries of blood and blundering from such phantom anticipations as this, anticipations that now haunt the thoughts of all politically-minded men.

XII.  THE OUTLOOK FOR THE GERMANS

Section 1

Whatever some of us among the Allies may say, the future of Germany lies with Germany.  The utmost ambition of the Allies falls far short of destroying or obliterating Germany; it is to give the Germans so thorough and memorable an experience of war that they will want no more of it for a few generations, and, failing the learning of that lesson, to make sure that they will not be in a position to resume their military aggressions upon mankind with any hope of success.  After all, it is not the will of the Allies that has determined even this resolve.  It is the declared and manifest will of Germany to become predominant in the world that has created the Alliance against Germany, and forged and tempered our implacable resolution to bring militarist Germany down.  And the nature of the coming peace and of the politics that will follow the peace are much more dependent upon German affairs than upon anything else whatever.

This is so clearly understood in Great Britain that there is scarcely a newspaper that does not devote two or three columns daily to extracts from the German newspapers, and from letters found upon German killed, wounded, or prisoners, and to letters and descriptive articles from neutrals upon the state of the German mind.  There can be no doubt that the British intelligence has grasped and kept its hold upon the real issue of this war with an unprecedented clarity.  At the outset there came declarations from nearly every type of British opinion that this war was a war against the Hohenzollern militarist idea, against Prussianism, and not against Germany.

In that respect Britain has documented herself to the hilt.  There have been, of course, a number of passionate outcries and wild accusations against Germans, as a race, during the course of the struggle; but to this day opinion is steadfast not only in Britain, but if I may judge from the papers I read and the talk I hear, throughout the whole English-speaking community, that this is a war not of races but ideas.  I am so certain of this that I would say if Germany by some swift convulsion expelled her dynasty and turned herself into a republic, it would be impossible for the British Government to continue the war for long, whether it wanted to do so or not.  The forces in favour of reconciliation would be too strong.  There would be a complete revulsion from the present determination to continue the war to its bitter but conclusive end.