Unofficially, it is quite another matter.  Democracy, even Social-Democracy, though as hostile to British Junkers as to German ones, and under no illusion as to the obsolescence and colossal stupidity of modern war, need not lack enthusiasm for the combat, which may serve their own ends better than those of their political opponents.  For Bernhardi the Brilliant and our own very dull Militarists are alike mad:  the war will not do any of the things for which they rushed into it.  It is much more likely to do the things they most dread and deprecate:  in fact, it has already swept them into the very kind of organization they founded an Anti-Socialist League to suppress.  To shew how mad they are, let us suppose the war carries out their western program to the last item.  Suppose France rises from the war victorious, happy and glorious, with Alsace and Lorraine regained, Rheims cathedral repaired in the best modern trade style, and a prodigious indemnity in her pocket!  Suppose we tow the German fleet into Portsmouth, and leave Hohenzollern metaphorically under the heel of Romanoff and actually in a comfortable villa in Chislehurst, the hero of all its tea parties and the judge of all its gymkhanas!  Well, cry the Militarists, suppose it by all means:  could we desire anything better?  Now I happen to have a somewhat active imagination; and it flatly refuses to stop at this convenient point.  I must go on supposing.  Suppose France, with its military prestige raised once more to the Napoleonic point, spends its indemnity in building an invincible Armada, stronger and nearer to us than the German one we are now out to destroy!  Suppose Sir Edward Grey remonstrates, and Monsieur Delcasse replies, “Russia and France have humbled one Imperial Bully, and are prepared to humble another.  I have not forgotten Fashoda.  Stop us if you can; or turn, if you like, for help to the Germany we have smashed and disarmed!” Of what use will all this bloodshed be then, with the old situation reproduced in an aggravated form, the enemy closer to our shores, a raid far more feasible, the tradition of “natural enmity” to steel the foe, and Waterloo to be wiped out like Sedan?  A child in arms should be able to see that this idiotic notion of relaxing the military pressure on us by smashing this or that particular Power is like trying to alter the pressure of the ocean by dipping up a bucket of water from the North Sea and pouring it into the Bay of Biscay.

I purposely omit more easterly supposings as to what victorious Russia might do.  But a noble emancipation of Poland and Finland at her own expense, and of Bosnia and Harzegovina at Austria’s, might easily suggest to our nervous Militarists that a passion for the freedom of Egypt and India might seize her, and remind her that we were Japan’s ally in the day of Russia’s humiliation in Manchuria.  So there at once is your Balance of Power problem in Asia enormously aggravated by throwing Germany out of the anti-Russian scale and grinding her to powder.  Even in North Africa—­but enough is enough.  You can durchhauen your way out of the frying pan, but only into the fire.  Better take Nietzsche’s brave advice, and make it your point of honour to “live dangerously.”  History shews that it is often the way to live long.