LAND & WATEK 
October 25, 1917 
They mnccra not one nation Imt all EuroiH-. Thoy concern in 
particiUarTthis nation, of which only a minority (least of all 
those whd so foolishly advise surrender) as. yet fully under- 
stand what defeat would mean for tlieir country and for their 
individual selves. 
Hut if you do not believe that victory is impossible, if you 
think that the Allied armies arc capable of achieving it, then 
to discuss the details of jieace is like discussing with a criminal 
what punishment he will accept. 
The terms which the Allies will impose if they are victorious, 
that is, if they succeed in putting the Prussian military- machine 
;uit of action arc such as are not worth discussion with an 
undefeated (k-nnany. simply liecausf; the existing Prussian 
military" machine will not sign its own death warrant. They 
involve — ^to put it in the most general fashion, two funda- 
mental propositions which an unbeaten Germany will never 
accept, first, the tremendous burden of material reparation, 
secondly, the moral indignity of seeing individual piinish- 
nurtt meted out to the men responsible for innumerable 
particular crimes. They further involve the imposition of 
guarantees, that is, in plain English, the taking of material 
hostages for the carrying out of stipulations to w hich the mere 
word qf the enemy in any form is worthless. When Prussia 
levied a vast tribute upon France from 1871 to 1873 she 
occupied territory' until the tribute was paid. She maintained 
herself in the position of victor after the destruction of the 
French armies, long after the mere signature of peace, and she 
had no choice but to do so. The " freer," the more 
" democratic " — in simple and truer language the more ex- 
pressive of the national will — the political .system of the van- 
quished may be, the more certainly must they attempt to 
evade the consequences of their crime. 
Now what Prussia has to lose is military power and the 
economic power which her military power safeguards. She 
has to lose supplies of iron which she took by force ; she has 
to lose Polish subjects, her tyranny over whose territory was 
the origin of her power ; she has to lose a vast amount of ship- 
ping to help replace that which she has destroyed ; she has to 
give free access to the Baltic — first to a free Poland, and next 
to the commerce of all nations. She has to abandon her grip 
over the Eastern trunk route ; she has, as we have said, to see 
the more criminal among her leaders subjected to the indignity 
of public punislunent, and she has ilso to devote years and years 
of labour for the profit of others in repairing what she has 
destroyed. She has at least to suffer this, or alternatively 
to boast her successful defence and our own defeat. The con- 
ception that such justice can be imposed without victory jn 
the field is lunacy. The conception that without its imposi- 
tion Europe can possibly secure stability is ignorant folly. 
There is a school which tells us that to say things so plainly 
is to " stifi'en the resist.irice of the enemy." Heaven knows 
where they got that conception ! If this were a war for petty 
local political objects to which the fighting had hitherto been 
limited, it might be true. If whole nations had not been 
strained to their utmost to achieve the fullest national objects 
''t might be true. But as things are it is a statement quite out 
of touch with reality. 
The resistance of the enemy is already stretched to the ut- 
most of which the enemy nations are capable. In that 
resistance the German Empire has come at last to drawing in 
boys of 17 and subjecting tltem to the massacre of modern 
war. In that resistance the enemy coalition against us has 
lost something like four million lives. In that resistance 
It has already suffered the most severe privations and is ap- 
proaching famine. The conception that we should in some 
way increase that resistance by repeating once again our un- 
alterable determination to conquer, is wildly unreal. You 
might as wcU say m the last rounds of a prize fight that the man 
who is getting the better of it must hesitate to deal heavy blows 
lest he should rally some reserve of force in his unfortunate 
opponent. There is nothing left moral or material upon which 
the enemy can draw beyand what he has already mobilised 
or has marked down for use. All his populations, including 
his voluntary Allies and those whom he commands as a tyrant 
have been thrown in for all they are worth. If the resistance 
IS successful Prussia has v/on. If she is pushed up to the break- 
ing point she breaks altogether. That is the situation, and 
one would have thought that a child could see it 
Strains of this sort are absolute and maximum strains. 
And strains of that kmd when they are resolved at aU are re- 
solved by nothing short of complete ruin 
But apart from these general considerations we should 
do ^^•ell to note the particular character of the propaganda 
Zlfl, 7Tr!l °! P*--^'^^tenns. It is well worth remarking 
that /A. ',,holeof.U w conducted upon the implied suggestion 
that the enemy s delence utll be victorious ; that a decision in our 
favour is impossible. It is Iwsed upon the idea that Pmsd:. 
w-ill concede this or that of l..r freewill still unSted ad 
that justice cannot be inaposed upon her 
• It is remarkable th.-it in all these ' debates which have 
been so prodigally nourished with money for some months 
past, there is no statement of extreme terms upon the other j 
side. The writers who in this indirect, but very useful, 
fashion are serving the enemy do not say : " Here is the 
maximum which the Allies could possibly impose, and here is 
the maximum which Prussia in her present state could possibly 
retain. Let us see what compnnnise can be made between • 
these two extremes." Even if they did this it would be our 
duty not to listen to them, because a civilization fighting for 
its life should not hear of compromise at all. But as a fact 
they do not state it thus at all. 
Yet that is how they should state it if they were sincere. 
A true arbitrator, a man really impartial between two con- 
tendants and even indifferent to their opposing morals, ' 
considers before striking a balance the full claims of each. 
Yet these self appointed abitrators. though they profess them- , 
selves so impartial as to be unaffected by cruelty and bad 
faith and indifferent to the religion and morals of our civi- 
lization, never consider the .\liied objects. They always take 
as a " basis of negotiation" the claims of an undefeated Prussia. 
Let us consider a few examples of this. 
In the matter of the rectification of frontiers in the \\'est' 
we have not got two schools in the' debate, one of them saying 
(Jermany must be allowed no bridgeheads across the Rhine. 
We have only the timid suggestion that perhaps as a very 
great concession upon the part of our enemy she will allow 
in the one particular case of Alsace-Lorraine a vote to lie taken 
while she is still in power, without any consideration of the 
innumerable families exiled; of the plantation of foreigners 
in the district ; of the pressure that can be exercised by 
Government ; of the fear of the future in the voters created by 
their experience of the past. The whole thing is in the tone of 
a small kindly concession by the enemy. It has nothing about 
it of a compromise between extreme claims. In the United 
States the " high brow " papers like the Nexv Republic, do not 
even allow this. Lorraine, they say, must remain German 
because Germany needs its iron ! 
Take, again, the case of the occupied territory. There is no 
balancing of, on the one side complete reparation, heavy in- 
demnity to those who have been enslaved, large payments to 
the families of those who have been murdered, the rebuilding 
of all destroyed monuments and private houses, the restoration 
of agriculture, etc, and mere evacuation upon the other. 
No, the pretence at reasonable dealing is entirely in the enemy's 
favour. Evacuation is all that is spoken of as" reasonable " 
the rest is ignored. 
A Fair Analogy 
It is as though a man came into your house, robbed your safe, 
murdered your children, set your books on fire " to make 
an example," incidentally burnt down your house as well, 
and then when you had caught him and got him on the ground 
(at great expense to your furniture) appealed to a third party, 
an " impartial arbitrator " who should say : "Come! Come! 
All this is surely very wrong ! This gentleman must cer- 
tainly leave your house— or rather the ruins of it— it is the 
only reasonable solution ! " 
take a third case, the case of Poland. There are all sorts 
of pretty schemes for a restricted, mutilated Poland undir 
German tutelage : a Poland that would be a mere expansion 
^ermany. But you never hear the claim to Danzic on the 
part ot these gentry who profess their sincere desire for a stable 
European peace ; you never hear any talk of the mineral 
wealth of Silesia shamelessly stolen from the Polish people ; 
and when statistics are quoted as to the proportion of Polish 
population in the districts robbed by Prussia no more than 
three generations ago, the statistics are always German 
statistics in which every official, down to the very gaolers 
are counted as normal inhabitants of the districts, and every 
man who can speak a little German is put down as being o"f 
full German blood. It is the same thing with the Adriatic. 
Jt IS only reasonable " that Austria should have an Italian 
town somewhere on the Adriatic. It is " only reasonable " 
that the main part of the frontier should lie south of the de- 
fensive line of the Alps. You never hear the full Italian claim 
mentioned and balanced against the Austrian claim, or rather 
again.-,t all that Austria can now hope for 
What is ahtays fut forward as the golden mean in every 
single case ts the very most thai the enemy could possibly set 
out of US even if, when peace were made, he were as strong as 
he IS to day. ° 
I marvel that opinion has not yet been struck by this 
singular phenomenon ! Here are would-be arbitrators posing 
as men who are balancing discordant claims,' and as folk 
who know that neither party to a quarrel can obtain all 
that It desires-but when they cume to details (of which they 
are very fond) those details are simply the maximum concei/- 
able demands of the enemy in his present state ! All the 
statistics are enemy statistics. The futur,-; envisaged is a future 
