12 
LAND & WATER 
July 19, xgxy 
debate would rage between those who said : "I did so and 
so and so," and those who retorted, " I told you ages ago 
that we ought to do something entirely different." 
The confusion would be worse confounded, in face of the 
impossibiHty and the practical inutility of fixing pre-war 
responsibihty, by the very serious economic and financial 
discussion regarding the cruelly heavy consequences with 
which every citizen individually wovQd be menaced and 
under the necessity of submitting. 
Political parties would argue over the equitable distri- 
bution of responsibility ; citizens would object to the 
distribution of the war taxes as having been unequal and 
unjust, and they would squabble among themselves when 
they had to assess the charges — a most formidable burden — 
resulting from the war. In the midst of all the maelstrom 
of public affairs and of all these mutual recriminations we, as 
Allies, must manfully face the fact that in all the countries 
a number of fools and knaves will be found insisting that they 
have been the victim of Alliances and that they might have 
expected much better treatment elsewhere. 
No good purpose will be served by emphasising the kinds 
of things to be considered. The same considerations 
that in each country will induce a man to indict his opposite 
neighbour who has resumed his normal way of living — 
to indict the party to which he docs not belong or the district 
where he is not domiciled, will most certainly induce him to 
indict the Ally who is no longer with him, but has gone back 
to his own country and henceforth stands behind another 
frontier. When the common frontiers of the Alliance are 
broken down the separate frontiers of the peoples will become 
barriers. 
Scheidemann's Peace 
No one can fail to see that Scheidemann's peace would 
surprise us in these unsavoury quarrels and that Scheidemann's 
Government would exploit them at leisure for its own greater 
advantage. Will the enemy fail, after the war, to carry on 
from outside all that espionage, provocation and propa- 
ganda on which for years past he has spent hundreds of 
millions of money ? Be very sure the ground would be well 
prepared for sowing dissension between the citizens of one 
country and their Allies of yesterday. With this object 
in view, the German would strive everywhere to create a 
movement of public opinion in favour of rapprochement 
with Germany. In every country where in 1914 he had 
any friends, he will strive to encourage them to renew a policy 
of agreement and closer relations with Berlin. 
And would not this policy of reconciliation with the Kaiser's 
Government be represented as the best means of securing 
individual and separate immunity from a new war ? No 
doubt all these negotiations would be difficult to conduct, for 
the Germanophils of 191 4 have lost a good deal of their pre- 
war credit and sympathetic favour ; German " fright- 
fulness," the frenzy of Boche strategy and tactics, and the 
inhumanity of Teuton methods remain, and long will remain 
fresh in tifie people's memory. 
No doubt these negotiations will be difficult to conduct — 
for a generation. Then we may expect the Germans to 
practice their art of writing history in their own manner, 
and humanity will not have seen the greying locks of the 
warriors of 1917. who by that time may be greatly changed 
by reflection. That will be the time when Germany will 
resume her forward march to Paris and to Calais. The 
Belgian frontier will still be commanded by German camps 
and by great German railway stations designed for purposes 
of invasion. And if the AUiances of 1914-1917 failed to 
achieve victory, who will believe in Alliances in, say, 1937 ? 
Germany will have spent her inter-beUum period in effecting 
the overthrow of the Alliances. Perhaps she will " demo- 
cratise " her army, permitting men to enter its commissioned 
ranks who hitherto have been excluded therefrom. She will 
not forget that the Pan-Germanists of to-day are for the 
most part Liberals obsessed with ideas of national greatness 
and of political progress of the middle classes. She will 
announce the " new births," to use Gambetta's phrase, and 
all that need be said will thus be said. Prussian 
militarism, which will not have been destroyed, will remain 
the object of a particular cult, for will it not have secured 
impunity for the aggressor Empire ? 
Impunity, moreover, is an inadequate expression. The 
aggressor Empire will have definitely achieved the conquest 
of its own Allies. It will have spread a net of domination 
over the whole of Austria-Hungary, over Bulgarians and 
over the Ottoman Empire, all of which she will have probed 
and tested to the bottom. 
Thanks to the trick of the drawn game, Germany will be 
in a position to concentrate on any day she chooses, not 
merely the German army divisions, "but the army divisions 
of Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey wherever she 
may please-to do so. She is entitled to concentrate them 
on the left bank of the Rhine, her most formidable military 
camp, where she will be a perpetual menace to Holland, 
Belgium, Luxembourg, the North and the East of France, 
and the whole Atlantic littoral. If some day she succeeds 
in paralysing the Russian people by her intrigues, will not 
Germano-Turanian militarism consider the plan of hurling 
the formidable mass of its four coalesced armies against the 
West ? And will it not seek by the rapidity of strategic 
successes to prevent the landing of the British Army and the 
preparations of the American Republic ? 
Can anyone really suppose that if Germany got out of the 
war not merely indemnified but supreme over the Allies, 
she would not attempt to bear down the little States, which 
would be reduced to a condition of hopelessness and moral 
vassalage by the powerlessness of the Alliance of 1914-1917 
to conquer ? 
Can anyone fail to realise the weight that would lie upon 
the soul of the Neutral Powers if they learned that Germany 
had been able to emerge from this war with her arms un- 
impaired ? Does not one feel ~that ultimately the Neutral 
Powers would succumb to the domination of the Germanophil 
party, and that the rout of the Pro Allies would be general ? 
Thus, a blank peace, a drawn game, would mean for the 
British that no return was possible to the status quo ante 
of 1914, and that henceforward they must maintain a perma- 
nent standing army to defend Belgium and their own territory. 
For the French it would mean the final renunciation of 
Alsace-Lorraine and of all guarantee of security in the north 
and east. For the Americans, as for the British, it would 
mean the necessity of entering into the ways of eternal 
militarism. Yes ; the armed watch would have to be main- 
tained and to discontinue it would entail acceptance of 
Destiny, that is to say submission to German autocracy, 
more or less thinly disguised. 
Germany reckons upon completing in peace her work in 
the war, if we do not exhaust her formidable miUtarism in 
the conflict now proceeding. She reckons first of all on 
penetrating into the economic and financial life of most of 
the European Powers. She reckons upon imposing her own 
commercial and financial domination upon them, and on ■ 
securing world-wide prevalence for her marks, her firms, 
her agents, her agencies, her oi'ganisers. With sublime 
hypocrisy she will offer her assistance in the rebuilding of the 
ruins which she has made. 
She reckons on setting up everywhere parties and groups 
who would take advantage of the general weariness to secure 
for her re-entry into countries whence her crimes ought to have 
banished her for years to come. Already, while the 
war is going on, she has tried to " work " opinion among the 
Allies. What will it be after the war, especially if she is adroit 
enough to assume an outward mien of democracy and succeeds 
in putting rather more out of sight the real preponderance 
of her Headquarter Staff and the Imperial Dynasty ? And 
again, is not a cry of universal brotherhood going up already ? 
Will not her cameraderie receive some sanction by this call 
of the heart to a less savage condition of things ? 
One would like to cry "Universal armistice ! Let us forget ! 
Let us forbear to pour out the precious blood of man ! Let 
us away with ideas of war ! " One would like to do this. But 
would not that be to betray the future, and would not the 
enemy already, by intimidation, have spread Pan-German 
domination a little wider over the world ? 
" We do not want the shameful peace which Germany 
offers us," said M. Ribot a few days ago. And so in France, 
as in England and in the United States and in Italy, there 
is only one policy and one will, in order to save the future of 
civilisation and of democracy — to save the independence of 
all the nations. 
The Governments know that they must be willing to hold 
out and to fight a little longer yet — perhaps for a long time 
yet. , The peoples must give their unanimous assistance to 
the unanimous Governments. Let us say it yet once more : 
an indecisive peace, fhe non-destruction of German militarism, 
will niean the definite triumph of the Pan-Germanist conspiracy. 
Only military victory by the Allies can maintain the 
policy of the natiops— ^eace, without and within each of 
the nations. Tlie men whose wills weakened would be 
responsible for defeat. 
The dramatic art of M. Brieux has a flavour of its own, not 
appreciated by everyone, but Mr. Charles B. Cochran is doing 
Rood service by presenting these modern French plays in London 
and staging them well. The Tlirce Daughters of M. Dupont if 
not by any means unrelieved gloom as many seem to think ; 
tliere is a strong farcical vein running through it, and laughter at 
the Ambassadors Theatre is frequent. The standard of the 
agting is very high, the whole caste being good, but the heaviest 
burden falls on the shoulders of Miss Ethel Irving and Mr. C. M. 
Hallard ; they are magnificent. It is a play not to be missed by 
anyone who makes a serious study of the drama. 
