of a single Pomeranian grenadier.  For instance, take the Militarist view that we must fight Potsdam because if the Kaiser is victorious, it will be our turn next!  Well:  are we not prepared to fight always when our turn comes?  Why should not we also depend on our navy, on the extreme improbability of Germany, however triumphant, making two such terrible calls on her people in the same generation as a war involves, on the sympathy of the defeated, and on the support of American and European public opinion when our turn comes, if there is nothing at stake now but the difference between defeat and victory in an otherwise indifferent military campaign?  If the welfare of the world does not suffer any more by an English than by a German defeat who cares whether we are defeated or not?  As mere competitors in a race of armaments and an Olympic game conducted with ball cartridge, or as plaintiffs in a technical case of international law (already decided against us in 1870, by the way, when Gladstone had to resort to a new treaty made ad hoc and lapsing at the end of the war) we might as well be beaten as not, for all the harm that will ensue to anyone but ourselves, or even to ourselves apart from our national vanity.  It is as the special constables of European life that we are important, and can send our men to the trenches with the assurance that they are fighting in a worthy cause.  In short, the Junker case is not worth twopence:  the Democratic case, the Socialist case, the International case is worth all it threatens to cost.

The German Defence to Our Indictment.

What is the German reply to this case?  Or rather, how would the Germans reply to it if their official Militarist and Kaiserist panjandrums had the wit to find the effective reply?  Undoubtedly they would say that our Social-Democratic professions are all very fine, but that our conversion to them is suspiciously sudden and recent.  They would remark that it is a little difficult for a nation in deadly peril to trust its existence to a foreign public opinion which has not only never been expressed by the people who really control England’s foreign policy, but is flatly opposed to all their known views and prejudices.  They would ask why, instead of making an Entente with France and Russia and refusing to give Germany any assurance concerning its object except that we would not pledge ourselves to remain neutral if the Franco-Russian Entente fell on Germany, we did not say straight out in 1912 (when they put the question flatly to us), and again last July when Sazonoff urged us so strongly to shew our hand, that if Germany attacked France we should fight her, Russia or no Russia (a far less irritating and provocative attitude), although we knew full well that an attack on France through Belgium would be part of the German program if the Russian peril became acute.  They would point out that if our own Secretary for Foreign Affairs openly disclaimed any knowledge of the terms of the