Nietzsche would certainly have agreed that we must kill the German women if we mean business when we talk of destroying Germany.  But he would also have answered my Why not?, which is more than any consistent Militarist can.  Indeed, it needs no philosopher to give the answer.  The first ordinary anti-Militarist human person you meet will tell you that it would be too horrible; that life would be unbearable if people did such things.  And he would be quite right; so please let us hear no more of kicking your enemy when he is down so that he may be unable to rise for a whole century.  We may be unable to resist the temptation to loot Germany more or less if we conquer her.  We are already actively engaged in piracy against her, stealing her ships and selling them in our prize courts, instead of honestly detaining them until the war is over and keeping a strict account of them.  When gentlemen rise in the House of Commons and say that they owe Germans money and do not intend to pay it, one must face the fact that there will be a strong popular demand for plunder.  War, after all, is simply a letting loose of organized murder, theft, and piracy on a foe; and I have no doubt the average Englishman will say to me what Falstaff said to Pistol concerning his share in the price of the stolen fan:  “Reason, you rogue, reason:  do you think I’ll endanger my soul gratis?” To which I reply, “If you can’t resist the booty, take it frankly, and know yourself for half patriot, half brigand; but don’t talk nonsense about disablement.  Cromwell tried it in Ireland.  He had better have tried Home Rule.  And what Cromwell could not do to Ireland we cannot do to Germany.”

The Sensible People.

Finally we come to the only body of opinion in which there is any hope of civilization:  the opinion of the people who are bent, not on gallantry nor revenge nor plunder nor pride nor panic nor glory nor any of the invidiousnesses of patriotism, but on the problem of how to so redraw the map of Europe and reform its political constitutions that this abominable crime and atrocious nuisance, a European war, shall not easily occur again.  The map is very important; for the open sores which have at last suppurated and burst after having made the world uneasy for years, were produced by altering the colour of Alsace and Lorraine and of Bosnia and Herzegovina on the map.  And the new map must be settled, not by conquest, but by consent of the people immediately concerned.  One of the broken treaties of Europe which has been mentioned less frequently of late than the Belgian treaty is the treaty of Prague, by which a plebiscite was to have been taken on the subject of the nationality of Schleswig and Holstein.  That plebiscite has never been taken.  It may have to be taken, with other plebiscites, before this war is settled.

German Unity Inviolable.