It is therefore a good thing to keep before us that it is at least possible that the verdict of mankind will be hereafter that when the victory was theirs the Allies judged the people of Germany in a hurry and reflected this judgment in the spirit in which certain of the terms of peace were declared.  The war had its proximate origin in the Near East.  It arose out of a supposed menace to Teuton by Slav.  The Slavs were not easy people to deal with, and the Teutons were not easy people either.  It was easy to drift into war.  It may well prove true that no one really desired this, and that it was miscalculation about the likelihood of securing peace by a determined attitude that led to disaster.  It is certain that the German Government was deeply responsible for the consequences.  In the face of its traditional policy and of utterances that came from Berlin the members of that Government can not plead a mere blunder.  None the less, a great deal may have been due to sheer ineptitude in estimating human nature.  How much this was so, or how much an immoral tradition had its natural results, we can not as yet fully tell, for we have not the whole of the records before us.  No one disputes that we were bound to impose heavy terms on the Central Powers.  The Allies have won the war and they were entitled to reparation.  This the Germans do not appear to controvert.  They are a people with whom logic is held in high esteem.  But we have to do something more than define the mere consequences of victory.  We have also to make plain on what footing we shall be willing to live with the German nation in days that lie ahead.  And here some enlargement of the spirit seems to be desirable in our own interests.  We do not want to fall again into the mistake that Burke made.

The spirit is at least as important as the letter in the doctrine of a League of Nations.  Such a League has for its main purpose the supersession of the old principle of balancing the Powers.  In the absence of a League of Nations, or—­what is the same thing in a less organized form—­of an entente or concert of Powers so general that none are left shut out from it, the principle of balancing may have to be relied on.  I believe this to have been unavoidable when the Entente between France, Russia and Great Britain was found to be required for safety if the tendency to dominate of the Triple Alliance was to be held in check.  But in that case, and probably in every other case, reliance on the principle could only be admissible for self-protection and never for the mere exhibition of the power of the sword.  If the principle is resorted to with the latter object the group that is suspected of aggressive intentions will by degrees find itself confronted with another group of nations that have huddled together for self-protection and may become very strong just because they have a moral justification for their action.  It was this that happened before the war which broke out in 1914, and it was the state of tension which ensued that led up to that war.  Had there been no counter-grouping to that of the Central Powers there would probably have been war all the same, but with this difference, that defeat and not victory would have been the lot of the Entente Powers.