LAND & WATER 
May ji, 1917 
The Policy of the War- III 
By Hilaire Belloc 
The Enemy's Last Plan 
IT 1^ iKjw clear what plan the enemy has devised for his 
uext apj>eal to the conscience of civilisation. To put it in 
one phrase he will proclaiiii his own conversion to the 
national jaiinciple, and his -projHJsal to establish it in 
the areas he still holds. , ■ . 
Well, if that establishment includ(* the CQnjiervation of 
I'russia with its power for armament, its historic continuity 
and oq^wnic life, Eurojie is defeated. \ 
Not only is Europe defeated but Great Britain and all the 
c.\tended scheme, which has Great Britain for its centre, has 
lost forever that secufity which is essential to its being. Its 
future is abandoned and its catastrophe has begun. 
W hy can one say at the present moment that the enemy has 
been driven to such straits that he is compelled to. deny the 
whole of his past and, as it were, his very soul ? 
The enemy is Prussia. What we call Germany is only the 
Germans organised as Prussians and by Prus.sians, while the 
other half of the huge combination agamst Europe and right 
living is now entirely vassal to Prussia. Now the whole 
history of Prussia for 200 years has been the negation of 
national right and of the national idea — in general, of Free- 
dom. This is not an inference, or a deduction made against 
men who deny it. It is a statement drawn from their own 
lips and their own writing, not only from all that they have 
done, but from all that they have said and jiroclaimed and 
laid down as their creed. Hence the form of this war. Hence 
the insolent proclamation of conquest in 1014 ; hence the 
amazing and hitherto unparalleled ultimatum to Serbia ; 
hence the cynical contempt for all treaties ; hence the viola- 
tionof Belgium amid the universal aji^irobation of-the German 
j;)eopJe ; hence, later, the enslavement of th«>u;ivilian pojju- 
lation ; hence the murder of non-combatants ; hence the 
ridicule of the democracies, especially when they were national ; 
lience the conception that there was in noble enthusiasm 
something weak '. lience the base but terribly dangerous poison 
wliich has been introduced, during our generation, into 
the history and into too much of the philosophy of Europe. 
When Prussia ])retends to a respect for national freedom 
and for national right it is as though the Erench had aban- 
doned the conception of glory or the British that of law ; why 
» an we predicate that so enormous a revolution- superficial 
though it be and purely diplomatic, and only for the mement — 
has been imposed upon the enemy by the increasing su()eriority 
of hi?< \\ estern foes ? 
We have it in the following indications : 
The enemy has already long insisted upon the injury done 
to small and neutral nations upon his frontiers by the blockade. 
He had already many months ago begun the thesis — utterly 
new to him, unheard in his lips since before the days of 
Frederick — that there was something sacred about freedom 
and international law. 
He has called for " the freedom of the seas." He has argued 
like any ])edant for particular points of custom in the European 
comity and has professed a strange regard for ideals which he 
alone opposed at the Hague. 
Next came a far more important thing. He plumped for 
the resurrection of Poland. 
There was to be a Poland once more ; mutilated, under 
tutelage, defined by alien powers, but at any rate a nation. 
Thi>. from the murderers of Poland, was something much more 
astonishing than opinion in the noise and tumult of the Great 
War could at tirst recognise. It was a landmark in that decline 
of Prussian power which the Great War has effected and is 
tffet tin^' more and more thoroughly with every passing day. 
But the last sign that this policy of pretending to a-settlement 
upon just national lines and therefore to a peace that shall save 
the assassin from the scaffold is the mSst significant of all. 
The Austro-Hungarian Empire has perfected, and will be 
urged bv its master to propose, a plan which w ill seem to those 
who half know their Europe the very solution for which the 
war was waged. It is without the least doubt a,plan for the 
full recognition of nationalities — where those nationalities 
do not interfere with the continuance of Prussian military 
power— that is, with our own future doom. 
Remember for a moment what the Crown of the Hapsburgs 
represents. The house of Hapsburg-I.orraine governs by 
various titles what are roughly three groups of races; the 
Gcrman-spcaking Austriaas. the independent Magjais, the 
separated Uidies of Slavs. The latter, though scjjaratcd not 
only in space but in soul by differences of religion, of custom 
and even of language, arc yet the majority. E.xactly lifty 
years ago when Vienna still pretended to the recovery of 
4eadershi])aAong the Germans, a comiironiisegavethc Magyars 
an equal seat in jiower with the German-speaking portions of 
the Empire upon the basis of a mutual oppyssion of all that 
was not Magyar or German, that is, in the rough, the Mag\ar- 
Austrian Alliance was founded upon a mutual oppression of 
the Slav fracfions. That opjiression was a far milder thing 
than the savage brutality of Prussia, but it was none the less 
a denial of nationality, and in the case of the Magyars qn open 
. proclamation that the races concerned were rto'i subjects of 
the common crown upon equal terms. 
The spirit of that compromise has departed. Central Euroi)e 
dragged into complicity with the Prussian crime with all to 
lose or gain together has no further use for Magyar privilege, 
and the scheme is to come forward with a re-establishment of 
nations under the Hapsburg Crown, and in its neighbourhood 
each enjoying something of self-realisation. The Galici;ui 
Poles shall be in the mam attached to the new autonomous 
Poland, the Cxpchs shall have their State ; Serbia sliallre-arise 
within limits regarded afi properly her own. Bulgaria will 
be gratified with the districts the loss of which moyed her so 
profoundly and led her into the Alliance against theWest and 
to a fellowshin with tlie Turk. It is evm possible that some 
concession will be made to the Roumanian people in Tran- 
sylvania. 
In other words,^ tl^e house of Hapsburg-Lnrraine can, when 
the moment is rij*. come forward before Europe, and say that 
the principle for which in the main Europe had fought is con- 
ceded. It miy well allows plainly Itahan fringes to revert to 
Italy ; it, will still more readilvallow a popular vote in the 
disputed belts close by. The" new l':mi)eror has dismissed 
from his councils the man who stood most for the old Magyar 
dom nation over the Slavs ; he has accepted among the new 
men two Germanised Bohemians, and BcrclitoW, who is but 
half German. The new reign has put it about through the 
Press of Europe that the largest concessions will be made, 
esjiecially to the Pohsh claim, and Prussia upon her side has 
widely advertised at once the violent protests of politicians 
andrjournahsts who do not count and the conyjysion of those 
who do. 
The plan coincides with the moment when the Parlia 
mentary sociahsts — tiny and desi)erafelv unpf)pular minorities, 
but given ]x>wcr by the strange modern development of 
professional politics— arc in all I'arlianientarv. countries 
alternating (under what .secret guidance we do' ric^ know) 
to rob us of victory. ' 
As their evil activity develops, the moment when Prussia, 
acting through Austria, can proclaim her conversion grows 
nearer. It is perhaps already nearly due. 
How would this scheme when the moment Tor putting it 
forward m its fulness is ripe, affect Prussia, who alone is the 
mistress and the Vralculator of the whole ?' It would be the 
salvation of Prussia : that is the result in (me word. For th(i 
Polish provinces nothing would be simpler than to jirrange 
a vote which would gi\e now to one little district adhesion 
to the new KingdQm of Poland- now for another a German 
majority. For a third so doubtful a situation that no " prac- 
tical man " could insist upon its restoration to Poland. 
Prassia has all the officials, all the secret police, all the 
machinery. Prussia, in her census counts everything German 
that can speak German. Danzic, without which Poland could 
never live, would be hopelessly lost to Poland under such 
a scheme. The necessary port, the necessary access to the 
sea would remain Prussian. The religious differences of the 
Masurian region would play their part ; ths mineral wealth 
of Silesia would quite certainly be \'oted..iiito the Prussian 
scheme, and Poland would re-arise not a great State defending 
our Western ideals upt)n the. further flank of our loes, but a 
crippled State vassal, under a nominal freedom, to Cicrman 
jjower. 
And what upon the other front? To •'restore" Belgium 
without indemnity and with' Prussia still standing, simply 
means that Prussia can 'at will, and at anv moment, reach the 
Narrow Seas. and. that Antwerp shall ' he for the future 
yirtuallv a German town. It means that Holland technically 
free shall be under German domination. 
As for the evacuation of the strip uf France still held— that. 
