12 
/LAND & WATER 
April 5, 1917 
First Condition of a Lasting Peace 
By Principal L. P. Jacks 
IT will bo reinfmborofl tliat thf ricrmaii liinpcroi. 
when abcnU to hmncli his proposals for peace last 
PecoinhxT, wrote to the Chancellor that the time 
had eomo for the performance of " a moral deed. " 
1 am hot an admirer of William II., but it seems to me 
only fair to him to sav that his use of this phrasi' is 
remarkable. It shows tha^'he had grasped an imjiortant 
principle. And, so far as 1 know, he was the hrst anions 
the statesmen of Europe to give it clear and concise 
expression. The principle is that great events are 
brought to their issues not by wortls but by acts. " In 
the beginning was the deed "—and there is another 
deed at the end. So far he was right. But he was wrong, 
as people who grasp a principle— the pacifists for example 
— so often are, in the application. He was wrong in sup- 
posing that he himself was the pfrson by whom '■' the moral 
deed " nujst be jM:>rformed. He was wrong also in his 
choice of the time, which is a serious error when the 
application of a right principle is in question. The 
time for the performance of the moral deed had not 
arrived when he wTote the letter to his ( hancellor. It 
will not come till the Germans are defeated. 
Ever since the war broke out a multitude of persons 
has been in evidence — and the multitude is increasing 
—who appear to think that the issue of the war can be 
determined by discussions, by deliberations, by round 
la,ble conferences and by programmes of one kind or 
another. Some of these persons are pacifists and some 
are n6t. The pacifists would end the war by discussion 
right away. The non'-parffists would win the. war in 
the first instance and then trust to a general discussion 
for the settlement of the next step. So far as the ne.xt 
step is concerned pacifists and non-pacifists seem to be 
agreed that talk will do the business. 
Now the " ne.xt step " is 'the crux of the whole pro- 
blem, for it involves the question of what we are going 
to do with our victory when we have gained it, in other 
w-ords, what are our aims in the war. President Wilson 
saw this when, he used the phrase " peace without 
victory." Whatever else President Wilson may have 
meant by those words, they show clearly enough that 
lie was thinking about the " next step " to victory, and 
was greatly perplexed. Perhaps he thought that unless 
we see the next step more clearly than we now see it, 
the victory itself might never be won. If so he was 
probably right. At all events, there is not a doubt that if 
anv one in authority could now define for us in half a dozen 
words what the " next step " is to be, he would greatly 
help us in the prosecution of the war. So far the only 
person who has done this with sufficient brevity is the- 
Kaiser. He has done it in three words — " a moral 
deed." In those words the Kaiser has indicated better 
than anybody else how the " next step " must begm. 
It must begin, not in a programme for the reconstruction 
of luuope. not in a general discussion of national or 
international rights, but, quite simply, in a moral deed. 
It is true that Mr. Asquith and others after him have 
also defined our aims in the war by three words — 
" reparation, restitution and guarantees." But these 
words foreshadow discussion rather than action, dis- 
cussion of the /onn which reparation, restitution and 
guarantees are to take, which is precisely what must 
be determined before the next step becomes clear. They 
lack the terseness and the insight, of the Kaiser's ex- 
pression. They indicate the characteristic faith of the 
don — whether of the university or the parliamentary 
; species — that talk will do the business, that argument 
will settle the dispute. 
I admit that ( \en the Kaiser's phrase leaves us asking 
what the fori)t of the " moral dee«l " is to be. But I sub- 
mit that if we take the Kaiser's words, instead of Mr. 
Asquith's, and remember all along that it was the Kaiser 
who uttered them, the natiu-e of the next step becomes 
increasingly clear. It consists in a simple act of justice 
- visited on a small group of men, of whom the Kaiser 
liimself is the chief representative — a class which is to- 
day, as it has been all through the ages, the chief enemy 
of tiie human race. What form precisely such an act of 
justice should tak-e how it should express itself, has 
l)etn /J^>wn in the clearest manner by the Russian 
Ke'volution, which had not taken place when Mr. Asquith 
made his speech, nor when the Allies, then uicluding 
among them the most desjjotic tyranny, of Europe, put 
forward the statement of their airns^ j As 1 have else- 
where ^itrit ten, the " moral deed " wijl i,n[orm the dt«^p>ots, 
these j>ests of mankind, by means" which admit of no 
misuadprstandiug, that they and theii Jikes will no longer 
be tolerated on this planet. They w;ll be called to 
account for their errors, solemnly judged and ellectually 
'disposed of by the human race. The Kussian revolution 
has already shown us the way, nay actually opened the 
way, to this moral deed, thereby bringing the war nearer 
to its issue than if a notable victory ha.u been won in the 
field by the AlHed arms. 
Such, is the moral deed which the case requires. Such 
is t|}c " next step." Such is the true substitute for 
Pre^iiipnt Wilson's ideal, vow definitely abandoned, 
of jjeace without victorj'. 
No More Despots 
I fcelieve that we should be well advised if for the time 
being we were to dismiss from our minds all other notions 
of the " next step," all plans for a reconstituted Europe, 
all programmes of territorial readjustment, all schemes 
or leagues for enforcing peace, all discussions of reparation, 
restitution and guarantees, and concentrate upon this 
as ihe,, one essential preliminary to everything else. 
So long as a single despot remains, ^s«jated on his throne 
there will be no peace for Europe, no security for any 
nation, big or little, no effectual reparation, restitution 
or guarantee, , no matter what treaties may exist, no 
matter what means may be set on foot to enforce them. 
Of what avail are pledges and sotPfm obhgations so 
long as their keeping is left, or partly left, in the hands 
of nj«n whose nature it is to break airpromises,''to violate 
all obhgations the moment it suits their purpose to do so ? 
Faithlessness, treachery, moral obliquity, is the very 
stuff of which tyrants are made. Not by the corruption 
of their own nature but by the malign influence of the 
position in which they are "placed, thev are transformed 
into monsters, into fools, whose stupidity, were it not so 
dangerous, would be the laughing stock of the world, 
into beings who lack every characteristic which isessehtial 
to just or reasonable dealings among men. They are im- 
possible people, impossible when they are acting alone, 
imix)ssible when they are acting in concert with others. 
It has always been so : it is so now more clearly than ever. 
The position of a Ca?sar, a Tsar or a Kaiser, whether his 
name be Caligula, Nicolas, or XA'illiam, is a position which 
no human being is fitted to occupy, and the certain 
penalty for placing him there, or iceeping him there, 
is madness, horror and crime. So long as one of them 
is left to befool his people, to betray them, and lead 
them, infected with liis own madness, into criminal 
enterprise, there is no conceivable Charter of Europe 
which would be worth tlie paper on which it is written. 
That an international police would keep these malefac- 
tors in order is assuredly the most fatuous of suppositions. 
They themselves would be among the chief members of 1 
the police ! And unless their previous record belies them 
they would not be long in getting it completely under 
their control. 
The main task awaiting civiHzation at the present 
moment is to show that it possesses the power of vin- 
dicating the distinction between right and wrong. That 
wrong has been done on a scale imexampled in history 
and unimaginable until the present war revealed the 
depths of iniquity into which despotism is capable of 
falling, is beyond question. To speak of these crimes 
as due to the working of " ideas " or " tendencies " 
or other such philosophical abstractions, is to overlook 
the fundamental moral fact. They are the work, of 
despotic, dynasties rnJ of their criminal entourage.. as 
all the lesser examples of similar crime have ever been 
since the world began. And the real work of the war, 
as I conceive it, is to bring this load of guilt back to the 
doors from which it first issued and to call the inmates 
