14 THE ROYAL CANADIAN INSTITUTE. 



monstrous creation of blood and iron be overthrown. Such is the plainest 

 dictate of the instinct of self preservation. It is also the plainest dictate 

 of justice. Germany must be paid that she has deserved and a reckon- 

 ing be had also personally with the pillagers, assassins, and murderers 

 who have carried out her pitiless campaign. Germany must be put in 

 a position that never again shall she have the ability to rise to defy the 

 world as she has done. 



We must not ignore, in dwelling on these matters, the difficulties 

 that stand in the way of attaining such results. No falsehood, no 

 artifice, no crime, no consideration, moral or otherwise, no baseness 

 stands for one moment between Germany and the objects she seeks to 

 attain. Even now she is feeling the public of the other nations on the 

 possibility of peace on some terms to save her face. The greatest danger 

 to be met is that the Allies may allow themselves to be bluffed into a 

 premature and inconclusive peace. 



The Allies hold the winning position and all that is necessary is to 

 stand fast together sternly mindful of the fact that it is not the German 

 armies alone that are to be met, but in addition the vast secret influence 

 and power possessed by Germany in that great number of its people, 

 and of its agents and spies resident in the countries of the Allies and in 

 the United States, combined with the strength and ramifications of 

 German financial interests throughout the world, more particularly 

 in England and the United States. The significant fact may be pointed 

 out, viz., that in England the public trustee has been appointed the 

 custodian of property to the amount of upwards of one hundred million 

 pounds sterling belonging to alien enemies. The agents and protagon- 

 ists of high finance will not lose sight of these facts, and their machina- 

 tions must be sternly faced. 



With all the craving of the public for information it is yet true that 

 little is known outside of those in high places of the inner history of 

 the war. We are with difficulty able to learn a fraction of the happen- 

 ings from day to day. Political action, diplomatic action affecting 

 these happenings and the relations of the nations are as to nearly 

 everything a sealed book. So it seems from the light of the past it must 

 be. 



On this subject Prof. Webster in his inaugural address before the 

 University of Edinburgh in 1914 said: 



"You will look in vain for the books which can teach Englishmen 

 the connection of their own country with the political life of the conti- 

 nent during the nineteenth century. Such books cannot be improvised 

 on the spur of the moment in the midst of a national crisis. Few will 

 dispute that the study of our diplomatic history in the past century 



