October 25, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
in which the enemy shall remain strong and be capable if he 
lives of becomine; stronger. The conception of punishment 
for evil done — surely the most elementary' idea underlying all 
human justice and all stable solutions — is not only eliminated 
but actually attacked. 
There is another feature in all this to which I would draw 
my readers' attention. 
Where, in the past, were these fine pleaders for a reasonable 
compromise ? We know t4ieir names and see their writings. 
How comes it that they had nothing to say of this sort until 
(iermany had lost her offensive power and was bleeding to 
death ? Which of them proposed a plebiscite in Alsace 
Lorraine when that district was as yet not fully colonised by 
its robber, and before the full effects of exile had taken place ? 
In what books or speeches did they advocate the restoration 
of Poland ? Where shall we find their passionate defence of 
the Ita'ian claims to fellow citizenship with the pure Italians 
of the Trentino ? 
It is notorious that we never heard of these things from 
them until the present pass, and surely such a fact is not only 
significant but conclusive. It is equally significant and 
equally conclusive that we heard nothing from them during 
the first half of the war, when it seemed within the power of 
the Central Empires to commit any injustice and to obtain a 
decisive victory for themselves. 
If it is such a monstrous thing to punish men who have 
ordered murder and arson and pillage, and to make such an 
example of them that for the future we may be secure from a 
repetition of those deeds, why was it not equally monstrous to 
commit them? One would "have thought that the murders 
at Dinant and at Louvain and at Sermaize and at Nomeny 
and countless other unhappy towns, and e%'en at Senlis, before 
the very gates of Paris, would have afi'ected men who profess 
to be superior to national feeling and to consider nothing 
but the claims of humanity. They were strangely silent ! 
In the same way they tell us it is unreasonable or bad 
policy to contemplate the confiscation of German shipping or 
the reparation by force of damage wantonly done on the high 
seas. But oddly enougl this tenderness does not apply to 
-murder on the high seas when that murder is committed 
by the enemy, it does not apply to the sinking of ships without 
warning or to the shelling of men in open boats. 
There has come in. as I write, the account of their latest 
crime of this sort. The German cruisers, ships amply able 
to have saved the crews and passengers of neutrals at their 
mercy, deliberately massacred these neutrals, men and 
women indiscriminately. It was sheer butchery for the 
sake of butchery, and something of a sort Europe had never 
known until this war, and in this war has only known as a 
Prussian thing. / 
Our " reasonable men " will tell us that the men guilty of 
such crimes " must not be left after the war with a feeling of 
bitterness." 
They will bid us regard these wanton murders as normal 
enough — just what we should do ourselves. 
^^ All these German bestialities are, it seems, no more than 
" the inevitable concomitants of war." 
Let us remind those who talk thus (from whatever motive) 
that if abominations of this sort are " the inevitable con- 
comitants " of war as Prussia makes it, then certain results, 
very unpleasant for Prussia, are also the " inevitable con- 
comitants " of peace, as it must be imposed upon Prussia. 
A certain amount of pain and discomfort are "the inevitable 
concomitants of physical struggle " as it is understood by 
the garrotter, but then also certain other unpleasant things 
are the " inevitable concomitants " of what happens to the 
garrotter when he is caught. The man defending the garrotter 
may say that the sufferings he has imposed upon his victims 
are only an extreme case of the annoyance which people 
always suffer from horse-play; and that "garrotting is only an 
extreme form of horsc-play. To this the magistrate will 
answer that he does not even allow horso-play upon unwilling 
\ictims. and is quite prepared to meet it with a fine or a short 
term of imprisonment, but that there is a certain difference 
of degree in the case of the garrotter which corresponds to a 
difference of degree in the fate the garrotter must be prepared 
to meet wheji he has the misfortune to be " thrown upon the 
mere defensive "--that is. to be in the dock. 
It is not true that Europeans in modern war have nornially 
marched through and sacked neutral territory, or raped, 
burnt and niurdcred in it as they passed through. It is not 
true that Europeans in the many unfortunate wars of the 
nineteenth century sank ships without 'warning (including 
neutral ships and hospital ships), secretly placed explosives 
on merchant ships, dclil)erately murdered men and women in 
open boats, or did any one of those acts which have specially 
marked this last phase of Prussian war. 
Those who pretend that there is to-day a case for an easy 
consideration of what has been a mere misunderstanding with 
equal and ordinary faults on both sides, are saying something 
liatly in contradiction with the facts. The facts arc snnply 
that one party in this war was the open admitted and boastful 
aggressor, and that the .same party, and not his opponent, has 
initiated eveiy new cruelty iii Tictual fighting and has alone 
been guilty of novel crimes against non-combatants and 
civilians. 
Those who deny that plain proposition are like men who 
deny visible and tangible objects in the world about them. 
I will go so fiu- as to believe that some of them are capable 
of self-deception up to a point hardly distinguishable from 
derangement, but the mass of them must be in bad faith. 
Ancl here, I think, is the strongest ground on which we can 
stand in our exposure of these men who would throw away all 
the chivalry of Europe and all the lives of the young English- 
men dead. We can say with conviction and witli sUl the 
existing evidence at our back : " Even those of you who are 
only dupes, who have not taken enemy money and are not in 
touch with enemy organisations, or the money and organisa-' 
tion of interests which happen to coincide with the enemy 
(of cosmopolitan financial interests, for instance, making for 
immediate peace) are filled with a very strong bias in favour 
of the enemy. You have in the past admired the society 
which he created, his oftcnsive acts and liis perverted morals. 
Therefore, is it that you are to-day willing to condone the 
logical consequences of these things as they appear in Prussian 
war. But we will not condone them." 
Falsity of Premises 
We may sum up the negative part of our argument — the 
rebuttal of the claim to detailed discussiorf of peace terms— 
by saying, that of its three parts, no one will stand examina- 
tion : ~ . 
(i) It is not true that the German people arc an oppressed 
majority hating certain cruel masters from whom it is our 
business to free them ; a " militarist party," or "Jimkers," 
or what not. The Germans are one body : welded together 
by the victories of a generation ago. They, not their masters, 
made this war. It is indeed true to say that, had not their 
Government moved, the populace would in some short time 
have overset that Government rather than fail to embark on 
that career of mastery to which they believed themselves 
destined. 
It is equally true that they applauded and continuously 
applaud every successive baseness in their conduct of war; 
that the " degeneration of war to indiscriminate murder," 
the contempt of chivalry, has been a national thing with them. 
As a nation they have acted, and as a nation they must suffer. 
As for the talk of making them accept " Democracy," 
and the phantasm that this would secure Europe, it is a phrase 
devoid of meaning ; and as for the idea that their reluctant 
acceptation of a Parliamentary Caucus with its professional 
politicians and the rest, would safeguard us, it is merely 
contemptible. If we wish to weaken them, by all means let us 
force such things on them. But no man seriously pretends 
to-day that these things help to a just and pacific expression 
of the National will. ' 
If those who thus talk of a " Democratic Germany " mean 
a Germany imbued with the spirit of human equality, of 
human dignity — why then we might as well be fighting to 
make our enemies converted to good manners, or the use of 
irony, or an admiration of the classic ideal. There is no 
positive exterior criterion of such spiritual things, and most 
certainly you cannot teacji them to the modern German in a 
short campaign. Still less can you accept some paper 
guarantee that his soul has changed. 
(2) That his lines are impregnable, and a decision against 
him impossible, is nonsense. His lines have been forced in 
place after place : because the job is not completed, is that 
a reason for giving it up ? He is more and more in jeopardy ; 
and he sees in his immediate future, defeat. To thiiik 
negotiation necessary because he is our equal is to stop the 
fight in its last round. He has become our inferior. He is 
increasingly our inferior in material strength. 
(3) Lastly, this cry for particular details of peace — (an 
enemy cry, remember)— always presupposes his terms, not 
ours. It is always what he will concede, not what Wc shall 
impose, that is the matter of this ambiguous discussion. 
There is a pretence of arbitration — but it is a false pretence. 
His apologists (for so those are who proiX)se a negotiated 
peace) invariably state the best case for him — never the 
general case between him and ourselves. 
All this demand for detailed discussion xvith him may, then, 
be neglected. 
But there is a deeper and more serious consideration. 
The Allies, under God. will conquer in this vast business. 
W6 shall (under Ciod) impose our terms. These are genera! 
conditions, not of a negotiated peace, but of victory. 
To these conditions of victory I will next turn. 
{Jo be Continued). H. Belloc 
