JLAINU & WATER 
June Ji, i(ji7 
The Contrast 
By Hilaire Belloc 
Pl'RHAFS tlu' best exercise lor those wlio are now 
nltectedby Hie strain of the war, its prokmf^ation, 
its severity, and those elements in every sief;e since 
Troy which )nake a siege seem intermmablc, is to 
set down oii pajx-r what kind of fruit must be exix-cted <m 
Hie one hand from a negotiated peace and upon the other 
from a true victory.. 
The distinction between a negotiated peace and a true 
\ictory has been developed at great length in these nthnnns, 
but that particular aspect of the distinction, tiie difference 
in result, has not yet been dealt with in any detail. 
Let us consider first what kind of EurojX' it was whicli the 
Allies, or, at. any rate, the great Western Allies, and in par- 
ticular the ancient civilisations of France and England, 
envisaged, when the German Emperor forced war, just 
after the harvest of 191^. 
1 think it is a fair statement of the Western mind — the 
nnnd of our older European civiHsation — to put it somewhat 
as follows : 
" Europe has during all this generation suffered increasing 
strain. The voung manhood of the nations' has, upon the 
Continent at least, suffered the severity ot c(.,nscri])tion. 
Three of the best years of a man's life have been taken from 
liim in a fashion quite unknown to our father^j. ■ 
" The efforts to rearrange society in juster fashion have 
been hamjx^red by the perpetual threat of war. 
" We know that this ceaseless menace proceeded from 
Prussia. We knew it, it is true, in a sort of naif-conscious 
wa\'. Some cf us admired, the mass of men were ignorant 
of, the development of Germany under Prussian guidance; 
but we all knew at bottom that, whether the catastrophe 
to< k place or no, the menace of it was a Prussian menace. 
" Europe is one society. In that society was a member 
Avho had acted in the past against the common conscience 
and who, in his extreme expressions at least, had suggested 
anarchy ; the subsistence and expansion of himself at the 
expense of the whole. Prussia has challenged Europe. We 
now know that she was prepared and that she has chosen 
her day. Wc were not prepared and the date is not ours." 
But the challenge having gone out, we will accept it, for it is 
.1 matter of hfe and death. We shall suffer " (very few men 
knew at how great a length or in what degree), " but in the 
end i>ur success is certain. 
" Of Russia we know little. Our judgment upon it is 
iiii))erfect. But it is our Ally. Apart from that the 
older civilisation of Europe cannot fail. It is in the nature 
of things that it should, after some trouble, conquer 
and restore normal conditions. Those normal conditions 
involve first of all the liquidaticm of all that nightmare of 
doubt and fear for the future under which our lives have been 
passed. 
" Next, they involve the estabhshment of Government 
upon the basis of the consent of the governed. They further 
involve the chastisement of those who wantonly broke the 
j)eace, and tliat a chastisement so severe that no further 
attempt of the kind shall be possible. Something insane is 
abroad. It shall be killed. Upon its destruction we will sore- 
arrange the Euroix-an affair that men shall live in reasonable 
ease and with a rej^sonable elbow room for the construction of 
security and goodwill. Prussia shall be beaten. She shall 
suffer military defeat. After that crisis we can make a Europe 
that will endure and that will be happy." 
This, interpreted in detail, meant that the natural con- 
sciousness of many jjeoples divided by artificial frontiers and 
oppressed by foreign rulers shall have its freedom, and thus, 
|)erhaps what is the strongest passion of man to-day. 
dniost his religion, the devotion to his own people, shall be 
able to act without hurt to others. 
The Europe that was to follow the peace would include, as 
it must necessarily fnclude, a France, the high civihsation of 
which should be a beacon in Europe imdisturbed ; an Italy 
no fraction of wliich should be suffered to lie under the 
domination of foreign officials, and Itahan seas again rightly 
Itahan as well. Even in the tangle of the Balkans this spirit 
of which I speak thought it possible to arrange delimitations 
which, roughly at loast, would leave the Greeks all Greek, the 
Bulgarians all Bulgarian, the Southern Slavs all one people, 
or at least all one federation. 
It saw the European and Christian elements of the Turkish 
Emi>ire restored to autonomy. The entry into the Black Sea 
^strategically and economicallv the key of everything in the 
East) open and secwe. It saw Poland, that mighty and 
wholesome nation, re-established. It saw the smalltr nations 
assuming their ancient function and \ivifying Europe by 
their multitude of peculiar characters. Each nation (accord- 
ing to this opinion) was guaranteed in such a scheme its 
ineans of life. Great Britain should certainly remain free of 
import by sea and so be secure in the livelihood of a vast 
IHjpulation restricted to so small an island. 
Ireland- it was the trend of the time — should recover her 
own traditions also. Belgium, which some have thouglit an 
artificial creation, which was divided between two races and 
jxrhaps in another sense between two religions, or, at any 
rate, two i)hiloso]>liies, ha«l now so long lived in unity as to 
discover, and ha\e the rigiit to maintain, her national exist- 
cnce. The ?amc was true of the Netherlands and of the three 
Scandinavian {>eoples. 
We were the richei" for all these diverse elements in Europe. 
We thought the diversity good morally in its .eftects, a])Hrt 
fnmi our doctrine that nations were of right free. And tlun. 
jx-rhajK, over and above these mcchanic.il arrangements of 
irontiers we might attain roughly, but sulliciently, domestic 
pace within each and revise tlie injustice of a worhl whirh, 
in its industriahsed portions at least, had concentrated 
economic power in the hai.ds of a few for whom the ma'-.s, with 
increasing discontent, accumulated wealth by their labour. 
That was the vision before the eyes of those who accepted 
the Prussian challenge. Let it Ix; carefully lemembered and 
repeated over and over again (for it is of vast importance) that 
this ideal, \arying with varying men but upon the whole what 
I have described, was to be the result of victoiy. 
Such an effort is not made until men are provoked to it. 
The Prussian challenge provoked us to the expectation of 
things not hitherto attained and also to the restoration of 
things which once were and ought to be again. 
Magnitude of the Task 
In this plan there was necessarily ini.ved u\>, .i^ liiciu is 
in every enthusiasm, that violence of the mind which, to use a 
metaphor, " short circuits " the processes of time. We thought 
the goal much nearer than it was. Wc saw it clearly as we 
still see it— but we imagined that the road was shorter. In tlie 
humble circumstances of physical life many men have ex- 
perienced this .same illusion : so docs a port seem within half 
an hour to a man saihng oversea when it is jierhaps half a day 
before he will reach it : so does a mountain climber seem a 
matter of a morning when it is a matter of two days. 
Nothing is commoner than the reproach that the enthusiasts 
for Europe under-estimated their task, but nothing is truer 
than the truth that this task was undertaken with a full com- 
prehension of its necessity. 
The passage of time has not deflected in direction, but it 
has certainly modified in texture the character of the effort 
in most men's minds. 1 think that it has so modified the 
texture most of all inthose large urban populations, character- 
istic of this country, which are swayed by the Press, wliich are 
denied direct experience, and which must feed upon the 
secondary evidence of things told to them and not appreciated 
by the senses. 
The war became in the West, after the victory of ^e '•rarne, 
a siege war, and for the character of a siege war the popular 
mind was ill-pr: pared. 
The character of a siege everywhere and in all times ha , 
been a wearing down. Never was a siege yet wliich prf)vided 
the spectacular effect of war. In every siege which the 
historian can mention, victory has been granted to the greater 
tenacity, the greater vision, "the greater length, both of will 
and of view. In every siege the resistance sta1Ki^il unbroken 
and apparently unbreakable right up to the last moment. 
And in every siege up to the last moment, the men in the 
outer hues have said " This will never end." 
But a siege, like any operation of war, involves victory 
or defeat. If the besieged compel their opjxments to n;:go- 
tiate, if they maintain their position, and having maintained 
it secure the core of what they suffered for, then they have 
gained a victory as truly as any victory is gained bv rapid 
movement in the field. Had Metz not" fallen by treachery, 
had Paris been relieved by the army of the Loire in J870, 
thoi'gii the I'lxnch shotdd have suffered imasion and have 
gained ii'itliMig. yet there would have remained with them 
a certain tradititm of .success, it sounds an imi'ossiblc 
