The annexation of Belgium, however, makes it possible to grant France less stringent conditions.  So long as Belgium—­under some form of self-government—­is under German sway there is no hope of revenge of France, and the conviction prevails here that after this war France will abstain from her dreams of aggrandizement and become pacific.  Germany can then make reductions in the burdens laid on her people for military service by land.

To arrange the position of Belgium in relation to Germany will be a very interesting problem for German policy.

It is obvious that the annexation of Belgium cannot be defended from the point of view of the principle of nationality.  The Belgians—­half of them French, half of them Flemish—­undoubtedly deem themselves but one nation.  As a mitigating circumstance in favor of the annexation it is urged—­above and beyond the intrigues carried on by Belgium with the English—­that Belgium, in days of yore, for a long time formed a portion of the German Empire, and that the inhabitants of the little country, to a considerable degree, gain their livelihood by its being a land of transit for German products.  Nationally, the annexation is not to be defended, but geographically, economically, and from a military point of view it is comprehensible.

At the east front of the central powers very different conditions prevail. Austria has no desire to make the conquest of any territory; indeed, just the contrary, would probably be willing to cede a portion of Galicia in favor of new States. Germany has not the slightest inclination to incorporate new portions of Slav or Lettish regions. Both Germans and Austrians wish to establish free buffer States between themselves and the great Russian Empire.

Not even the Baltic provinces, where Germans hold almost the same position as the Swedes in Finland, form an object for the German desire of conquest, but her wish is to make them, as also Finland, an independent State.  Furthermore, the Kingdom of Poland and a Kingdom of Ukraine would be the outcome of decisive victories for the central powers.

What Germany would demand of these new States, whose very existence was the outcome of her success at arms, would simply be an economical organization in common with the German Empire, an enormous central European “Zollverein” ("Customs Union”) with Germany at its heart.  It is only such a union, in the opinion of leading German statesmen, which could hold the United States of North America at bay, and after this present war, moreover, the world would only have to take into account two first-class powers, viz., Germany and the United States of America.