October ii, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
the greater part— are tlie spontaneous expression of opinion. 
They are no doubt canalised and used once they begin, but 
most of them spring, not from leaders, but from the crowd. 
The ways in which you can tell a movement which is not of 
this nature, but is engineered from its origin, the tests of its 
artificial character, are as follows : 
It has no gradual process of development. It arises 
suddenly and exactly at the moment convenient to its 
authors. It throws out no branches naturally as spon- 
taneous opinion does, but perpetually repeats set phrases 
which have been given it and is careful to limit itself to 
tliose phrases lest it should disobey orders. It exhibits 
with mechanical precision the sudden suppression of the 
older policy which it has succeeded. 
Tests of Artificiality 
Now bj' all these tests tlie discussion of " Terms of Peace " 
while the war is yet undecided is an engineered and artificial 
policy. It was not of slow growth ; it began all over the 
world just at the moment when tlie last German offensives 
were defeated. It began just when the enemy's Higher 
Tommand knew that for the future it had to be entirely on the 
defensive, a thing, be it noted, which tlie Allied Higher Com- 
mand could not know for" some time, and which your journalist 
or politician could not guess at within a margin of error of 
some months. At the same time, the old policy, which was to 
talk of Germany as brutally attacked by wicked men and of 
lier moral right to do what she did, was completely dropped. 
It was kept strictly for the home press and disappeared 
entirely from the press of neutrals and opponents. Further, 
throughout the whole movenjent from its origin, there has 
been that curious note of ceaseless repetition, unexpanding, 
undeveloping, mechanical, and depending upon fixed phrases, 
most of which can actually be traced to an origin in Berlin. 
This apparently sincere and apparently reasonable dis- 
cussion of ■' terms of peace " is one of the few clever things 
which the agents of Berlin have done since the Mame. Most of 
their actions have been foolish ; the most remarkable examples 
f)f folly being their rieglect in the use of cipher and the con- 
sequent discoverj* of their diplomatic movements. Their 
lirst policy, which ran from the defeat of the Marne to the 
l>eginning of the Somme, was also less able, for it consisted in 
saying things that no one could possibly believe, such as that 
the war had not been made by Germany, ahd that the desire 
for conquest was not in the Prussian nature. But this second 
policy is an able one, and if we do not look out it will succeed 
in defeating the Allies. It has very powerful forces on its 
side because it appeals in the most winning manner at the same 
time to fools and to knaves. The financiers who have no 
national interests and who naturally want an inconclusive 
p>eace (if only from the fact that their fortunes cover both 
sides and that a decisive victory would ruin one of those sides) 
are strong supporters of this discussion of terms of peace, 
and the great mass of unthinking men are attracted to it in 
all sorts of ways. It looks so innocent ! However good a 
patriot vou are there can be no harm in stating your terms. 
After all. all war is fought for pcjlitical objects of some sort, 
and to fight without stating them is to fight in the dark. 
What we desire after the war is a stable peace and any con- 
structive work towards it must be begun by way of definition 
before the war ends, etc., etc. 
The briefest examination, not only of the dates which mark 
this new policy but of its character, will convince us that 
these plausible arguments do not represent its true motive at 
all. The motive is to save the Central Powers, and in par- 
ticular the German Empire, from the punishment due to the 
crimes of this war, and to leave their strength intact for the 
future. In a word, the object of the whole affair is to save 
Prussia. 
Look at the movement in some detail and you will discover 
how true this is. Let us take it point by point. 
The first feature in the plan is to distinguish between the 
German people and their rulers. The thesis is that the German 
Empire is a country in which popular opinion does not exist, 
or if it exists is brutally suppressed, and that the great mass 
of men in that Empire are compelled unwillingly to wage 
war and even to commit atrocities in war by monsters who bear 
the names sometimes of " the Kaiser," sometimes nf " the 
Junkers." Personally I prefer the English words the German 
Emperor and the Squires, but no matter. Side by side with 
this thesis you get the corollary that if the Germans were to 
throw off this heavy yoke and become something called " a 
democracy," we should no longer have any quarrel with them, 
and we could all settle down to a comfortable millennium. 
Now the main thesis here can only hold water with those 
nunds— unfortunately not uncommon in our modern civilisa- 
tion—which accept a secondary impression snch as printed 
words and reject a primary impression such as the evidence of 
their frtvn senses. No one could travel in modem Crtirmanv 
for .so much as a week-end without discovering the utter 
unreality of the idea that the German peoples are the un- 
willing slaves of an unpopular tyranny. It is the wildest non- 
sense. The Prussianised German Empire is the most 
homogeneous State in the world. It likes its form of 
Government ; its form of Government suits it, and even 
where there is criticism it is essentially " the criticism of the 
household." There is no shadow of real opposition to or real 
dislike of what is an essentially national and to them satis- 
factory form of government. The Federal Constitution, the 
large local autonomy, the long established hereditarj' families, 
and the dynasty of the Hohenzollerns at the head — every part 
of the organism is thoroughly popular and strongly supported 
by the people. We may, and it is to be hoped that we shall, 
destroy this organisation precisely because it is strong. Its 
strength has very nearly meant the undoing of Europe. But 
to say that in destrojang it we are giving back freedom of 
national expression to the Germans is a falsehood. They 
have never had so high a power of self-expression nor have 
been so truly themselves as in the present war. 
Take the corresponding statement that the mass^of the 
Gorman forces did evil only under orders and not througli a 
spirit pervading the whole people. It is equally a monstrous 
figment of special pleaders who wished to save that people 
from what they now see to be an approaching punishment. 
Of all the myriad testimonials carefully sifted and docketed 
by the French and English authorities for use at the con- 
olusion of the war, there is hardly a trace of reluctance ; 
there are innumerable examples of satisfaction and delight. 
From the first massacre of civilians upon the very frontier 
of Belgium, through the butchery of innocent people in 
I^uvain, in Liege, in Dinant and in fifty other places more 
obscure, up to the latest murder by sea, the last wanton 
shelling of men in open boats, the tale is always the same. 
The German soldiery act thus because it is the national con- 
ception of war. They are -applauded for acting thus by 
their civilian population between whom and them. there is 
no distinction at all ; they will act thus whenever they have 
the power so to act in the future ; it seems to them the most 
natural thing in the world. The bestial acts of defilement 
which marked the whole advance up to the Mame, were the 
jests not only of the officers l?ut of the private soldiers of the 
German Army. You will look in vain even at the worst 
cases for any sign of reluctance. The man whose sport it was 
to shoot at the drowning women in Sermaize was not a man 
acting under orders ; he was a German private, acting as 
innumerable other German privates have acted before him 
and were to act after him. • Tne man who methodically shot 
off the lock of the tabernacle in Gerbeviller Church in order to 
steal the sacred vessels was not acting under any orders ; he 
was out for looting an altar ; he was doing what he had always 
understood was the proper thing to do in war. One can know 
nothing at all of human nature if one believes that vileness of 
this kind is cured by the signature of the perpetrator to a bit of 
paper or by his mere protnise to amend. It is cured by 
pimishment, and if the punishment cannot be inflicted it is 
not cured at all. If it is not cured there is no future for 
Europe. 
Democratic Prussianism 
The corollary to this strange doctrine of a charming but 
oppressed German people whom we are to set free to follow 
their kindly instincts is equally false. That corollary pretends 
that something called " Democracy ' being established in 
Germany, the men who have committed these crimes and de- 
lighted in them will suddenly change and establish a millennium 
of peace. 
It is remarkable that no definition of Democracy ever 
follows this repeated statement. Sometimes, indeed, one 
of the more naif of the pleaders for Germany tells us that it 
means a Parliamentary system of Government ! That can 
hardly be considered seriously. No one can say seriously 
after the experience of the Parliamentary countries that 
government by the professional politician and the Caucus 
is more popular or more represents the direct action of the 
people than do the present institutions of the German Empire. 
If what i^ople mean by the use of this word " Democracy " 
is the spreading of the democratic spirit in general — a spirit 
which is not at all native to this country but which is that of a 
majority in France, and certainly of nearly everyone in the 
Colonies and the United States— all one can say is that such a 
term has no relation to the present war. England is fighting 
a people which deliberately challenged Europe in the hope 
of an easy conquest and proceeded to degrade war to indis- 
criminate murder — accompanied by every other abomination 
they could invent for spreading " terror or satisfying their 
appetites. What can it possibly matter whether such an 
enemy profess this or that system of Government ? 
But even if it did : even if you hold 'demotTacv to be a 
