June 21, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
tiling to say in the ears of those wlio have known the Europe 
of the last' fifty years,- but -i-t is a true saying ; defeat and 
victory are ultimately things of the soul, and the terms of 
victory are an outward expression of tliose things. 
A siegp warfare conducted to it«; conclusion, the imposilion 
of the will of the victor upon the vanquished, is tlie most 
conclusive of all. Precisely because the besieged have been 
able under the conditions of the defensive to put in their 
last reserves of strength, precisely for that reason is it that 
when they fail, they fail iitterly. 
But a siege which ends by the confession of the besieger 
that the task is too- much for him, that he will parley with his 
opponent and come to an agreement while the fortress still 
stands, is morally a triumph for the besieged. 
A'ow if the siege upon which the Allies are at present 
occupied concludes thus in any negotiation with the be- 
leagured under the " best terms " that can be obtained, note 
what follows. 
1 have put forward what I believe to be roughly a true state- 
ment of the \ision before the Allies when this challenge was 
lirst thrown down. 
Ix't me contrast with it .the actual thing that will follow 
in fuirope if the enemy shall succeed in wearying the tenacity 
ol his opponents and in establishing the conditions first of 
a tiuce and lastly of a settlement. 
i.et us suppose that such a settlement required the evacua- 
tion of territory now occupied and even the renovation of 
damaged t-owns — but that not at the command of the victors 
but by the consent of an unvanquished foe. Let us suppose 
that in name at least the independence of the nations were 
recognised and that the new Europe of which men have 
dreamed were established so far as the mechanical arrange- 
ment of frontiers can establish it— but that not at the dictation 
of a conquering army, but by the permission of those which 
the army had hoped to defeat and had failed to defeat. 
What would be the effect upon the soul of Europe ? What 
would be tlie effect upon its will, its traditions, its ideals, 
above all, what would be the effect upon its future of such 
a surrender, for surrender it would be ? 
In the first place, the coming generations would be under 
the spiritual domination of Prussia. Prussia and the Germany 
which she has indoctrinated would say with justice, " All the 
world ci^me against us. Upon the Plast we were victorious 
for we dissolved the pohtical cohesion of our enemies there. 
Lpon the West blow upon blow was met %vith entire resistance, 
and we emerged from the great ordeal triumphant." Prussia 
would say tins with justice, and the opponents of Prussia, 
though they might deny such a truth with their lips, would 
acknowledge it 111 their iieaits. The German people, inclined 
m some measure to regard their crimes as the universal con- 
science regards them, will be able to sav, " Yes, we did ill, 
but we did it in a good cause and the Prussian nation has 
survived." 
Men would naturally and inevitablv sav that the power 
which had so defended it.self successfutlv was in the order of 
thingi. They would imitate it even where they did not 
revere it. 
Jii general, the Europe of the future would suffer (for I 
think It is a suffering) from^the modern German attitude 
towards the world. ■ ^ 
I will not discuss whether that attitude be good or evil at 
this point. To most of us it is intolerable. We see in it a 
mishandling of all the works of men— bad building, bad 
thought, bad morals, bad architecture, bad cooking, bad 
everything. There are those who think otherwise. There 
are those to whom the German is pleasing and even his con- 
fused intelligence a charm. They are welcome- to their 
opinion. But, at any rate, if the German, pleasing or un- 
I'leasmg, according to taste holds the fort, he is the master 
ol our luture. The national soul of the various aUied peoples 
would be under the impression of defeat. The national soul 
ol the Germans would be under the impression of victory. 
That IS the first large aspect of the thing. 
You cannot escape it. You cannot by any use of words 
veil that truth from your minds. For the war to end without 
tlie deleat of Prussia would mean that the generations to 
come, I know not for how long a time,would suffer increasingly 
from the Prussian flavour and be tinged with the Prussian 
roloiu. It is so and has always been so in Europe when 
something which has challenged Europe has proved victorious 
in arms. 
But let us go into points more concrete and detailed. The 
war has jiroduced more strikingly tht^n anything else a number 
ot new acts m war, which may or may not become precedents. 
The enemy has made use of weapons which had been 
thought ruled out of our civilisation. He has used treachery, 
lie has torn up treaties. He has used poison. He has 
tortured prisoners. He has enslaved. He has murdered 
non-combatants. He has sunk innumerable non-combatant 
ships without warning, neutral as well as Allied. He has 
terror'snl civilians by (he bombardment of op.n towns. II 
those things remain without punishment they have conje 
to stay. There are tho.se who say that they have corhe 
to stay in arty case. I am not of their opinion- As it seems 
to me, history- pro\'es the jiower of the human mind to recovtr 
itself and to be rid of abnormal evil. But only upon the 
conditit'n that- abnormal evil is made to -suffer something 
that shall be a lesson to it and a warning. 
We 'know how it is with an individual' life. A man will 
.sink slosvly into a habit which destroys his soul. By what is 
he rescued ? Not by argument or by persuasion, but by a 
shock. -Some great suHcring, some moral proof ' of the 
difference between what he was and what he is wakes him 
up. So it will be with Europe. If those who have done 
these things are heavily punished for them — and only military 
success can secure that effect— I do not believe that they will 
re-arise in Europe. 
But if there is no punishment then war has changed into a 
much more evil thing than our race ever knew before, and 
into a thing that will oe wholly destructive to our civilisation. 
Con.sider for a moment what will follow if these things do 
become precedents, and if the future regards what has been 
gradually imposed upon modern war by Germany, as actions 
normal to all war. 
Of the effect upon this country there can be no doubt. 
It will be at the mercy of constant immediate unforeseeable 
attack upon its merchandise by sea and upon its civiUan 
population by air. The strain of preparation against such 
attack, awful as it was before 1914, will become far greater 
than ever it was before. The instability from which Europe 
suffered for so long will become something worse than in- 
stability. It will become (and the process of its coming will 
not last long) a sort of toppling ; a crash that may come at 
any moment. 
We can, if we will, but only by a complete victory, eliminate 
the thing for good. We can make it impossible for it to enter 
the mind of the European that he should torture or should 
enslave, that he should murder upon the high seas, that he 
should break a treaty with impunity. But that change of 
the mind has for its absolutely necessary condition military 
success, complete success in the field. 
Consider, again, what sort of nations those would be who 
would arise in this new and Prussianised Europe. There 
would be a Poland no doubt. It would be a Poland moderated 
and controlled from Berlin. That is inevitable. 
It would be forbidden access to the sea. It would be 
mutilated. It would be under tutelage. 
There would be a Scandinavian group— a Holland and 
perhaps a Belgium, but not one of those five small nations 
would exist save at the will of the German organisation, of 
which they would be the fringe. 
There would be a I">ance, as there will always be, but it 
would be a France that said to itself : •" 1 was beaten once in 
war. In the second occasion I made the supreme sacrifice, 
I took the brunt of the fighting, I drove the vastly superior 
enemy to earth; I wore him down till he was just on breaking, 
point. But the fruit of that vast and salutary efibrt was 
not gathered. The AUiance failed, and I received nothing 
save what I received at the will of my enemies." And there 
would be an Italy, an Italy that would say, " I helped the 
Alliance, and for my reward I have incorporated this or that 
district which is of my own blood, but the Power wliicli held 
them once may hold them again, and my seas are not mine 
own." 
:-!ore especially there would be an England which would 
say to itself — and the more bitterly bevcapse men would 
hesitate to say it publicly and openly; "I accepted the 
challenge and 1 fought hard, but I could novt do my will, and 
now at every moment with these new fashions of war I am 
in peril. My old pride is gone and my old State." 
It is perhaps wise to conclude such a suryey with the 
most intimate question of all — a question that- has exercised 
the mind of every thinking man in our generation : I mean 
the relation between the few who possess and the man y who 
work for them. 
What does a Europe in which Prussia is the;- model promise 
to those who are most concerned with this mo.' t vital matter ? 
The Prussian attitude towards this tremendous business of 
domestic or social organisation is wel 1 known to 
us. We have seen it, not only in the Pruss,tan losses, but 
most striking.-y in the attitude of the Prussian .Socialist party 
and in, I do not say the unwillingness, but the incapacity of 
the Prussianised German to act save under -orders. His 
inability to organise from below. 
The modern German conception — the Prussia n conception 
of a .settlement in this vast affair, is tho:t the proletarian 
majority shall be givi-n a certain security ai td sufficiency 
by law, but that all power and direction, aritl (ujovment 
for that matter, shall remain with the possessing: few. What 
we have copied from Prussia in recent \imi •■, in.uir ligislatioii 
