We know little of the psychology of this new Germany that has come into being since 1871, but it is doubtful if it will accept defeat, and still more doubtful how it can evade some ending to the war that will admit the failure of all its great hopes of Paris subjugated, London humbled, Russia suppliant, Belgium conquered, the Near East a prey.  Such an admission will be a day of reckoning that German Imperialism will postpone until the last hope of some breach among the Allies, some saving miracle in the old Eastern Empire, some dramatically-snatched victory at the eleventh hour, is gone.

Nor can the Pledged Allies consent to a peace that does not involve the evacuation and compensation of Belgium and Serbia, and at least the autonomy of the lost Rhine provinces of France.  That is their very minimum.  That, and the making of Germany so sick and weary of military adventure that the danger of German ambition will cease to overshadow European life.  Those are the ends of the main war.  Europe will go down through stage after stage of impoverishment and exhaustion until these ends are attained, or made for ever impossible.

But these things form only the main outline of a story with a vast amount of collateral interest.  It is to these collateral issues that the amateur in prophecy must give his attention.  It is here that the German will be induced by his Government to see his compensations.  He will be consoled for the restoration of Serbia by the prospect of future conflicts between Italian and Jugoslav that will let him in again to the Adriatic.  His attention will be directed to his newer, closer association with Bulgaria and Turkey.  In those countries he will be told he may yet repeat the miracle of Hungary.  And there may be also another Hungary in Poland.  It will be whispered to him that he has really conquered those countries when indeed it is highly probable he has only spent his substance in setting up new assertive alien allies.  The Kaiser, if he is not too afraid of the precedent of Sarajevo, may make a great entry into Constantinople, with an effect of conquering what is after all only a temporarily allied capital.  The German will hope also to retain his fleet, and no peace, he will be reminded, can rob him of his hard-earned technical superiority in the air.  The German air fleet of 1930 may yet be something as predominant as the British Navy of 1915, and capable of delivering a much more intimate blow.  Had he not better wait for that?  When such consolations as these become popular in the German Press we of the Pledged Allies may begin to talk of peace, for these will be its necessary heralds.