LAND & WATtiK 
UCLUIXI 25. 1917 
Thcv concern not one nation but all Europe. They concern . 
partk:ular|tbis nation, of whid. only a minority (least of all 
hoi who so foolishly advise sunemkr) as yet lully under- 
stand -what defeat xwuld mean- for their country and for then 
indiviclual selves. . . . , (■,,„,, 
Hut Jf you do not believe thai victory is impossible, il you 
think fhat the Allied armies ;u-o capable of achievmg it, then 
U, discuss the details of pace is like discussing with a crmnnal 
what pu-aishment he will accept. . 
The te.'ms which the Allies ^^iO impose if they are victorious, 
thU i'^ if Hiev succeed in putting the Prussian military machine 
out of' action, are such as are not worth discussion with an 
undefeated C.ermanv, simply because the existing 1 russian 
military macliine will not sign its own death warrant. Ihey 
involve -to out it in the most general fashion, two funda- 
mental propositions which an unteaten Germany will nevei 
nccJept first, the tremendous burden of material reparation, 
\econdiv\. the moral indignit>r of seeing individual piintsh- 
mcnt motcA out to the m-ar responsible for innumerable 
particular crimes. They further involve the imposition o 
guarantees, that is, in plain English, the taking of inatenal 
hostages for the carrying out .of stipulations to which the meic 
word of the enemy in any foirm is worthless. When Prussia 
levied a vas* tribute upon Prance from 1871 to 1873 she 
occupied territory until the t..-ibute was paid. She maintained 
lier'.elf in the position of victor after the destruction of the 
f-rench armies, long after the mere signature of peace, and she 
had no clioice 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 mav be, the more certainly must they attempt to 
evade the consequences of thieir crime. 
Now what Prussia has to dose is military power and the 
economic power which her military power safeguards She 
has to lose supplies of iron vfhich 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— ftrst 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 punishment, and she has also 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 \ictory in 
the field is lunacy. The conception that ■yvithout its imposi- 
tion Europe can possibly secure stability is ignorant folly. 
There is a school which tells ik that to say things so plainly 
IS to " stiffen the resistance of the enemy." Heaven knows 
where thev g(jt that conception ! If this were a war for })etty 
local political objects to which the fighting had hitherto been 
limited, it miglit be true. If whole nations had not Ix-en 
strained 10 their utmost to' achieve the fullest national ()bjects 
it 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 them 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 well say in 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 beyond 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 won. 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 kind when they are resolved at all are re- 
solved by nothing short of complete ruin. 
But apart from these general considerations we should 
do well to note the particular character of the propaganda 
for the discussion of peace terms. It is well wortii remarking 
that ///(' 7i"/)o/<' "/ il is cnnduclcd upon the iinplii'd sug'^estion 
that llw enemy's detence will he viiiorious ; that a tlecisioii in our 
i;ivour is impossible. It is bas^l upon the itlea that Prussia 
will concede this or that of her free will still undefeated and 
that justice cannot be imposed upon her. 
It is remarkable that in all these debates which ha\'o 
been so prodigally nourished with money for some months 
past, there is no statement of extreme terms upon the other 
side. The writers who in this indirect, but very iiseful, 
fashion are serving the enemy do not say : " Here is the 
maximum which the Allies could possibly impose, and here is 
tlie maximum which Prussia in her present state could possibly 
retain. Let us see what compromise 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 ft>r 
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 fidl claims of each. 
Yet these self appointed abitrators, though they profess them- 
selves so i-mpartial 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 West 
we have not got two schools in the debate, one of them saying 
(iermany 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 be 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 Hke the New 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 a? 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 cauglit him and got him on tlie ground 
(at great expense to your furniture) appealed to a third party, 
an " impartial arbitrator " who should say : " Come ! Come ! 
.All tliis 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 under. 
German tutelage : a Poland that would be a mere expansion 
of Germany. But you never hear the claim to Danzic on the 
part of 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 arc always German 
statistics in which every official, down to the \'ery gaolers, 
are counted as normal inhabitants of the districts, and every 
man who can speak a little German is put down as being of 
full German blood. It is the same thing with the.\driatic. 
It 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 .\ustrian claim, or rather 
against all that .Austria can now hope for. 
What is aluays put forward as the golden mean in every 
single case is the very most that the enemy could possibly get 
out of IIS even if,'rchen peace loere made, he were as strong as 
he is to day. 
I marvel that opini(m has not yet been struck by this 
singular phenomenon ! Here are would-be arbitrators posing 
as men who are balanciijg discordant claims, and as folk 
who know that neither party to a quarrel can obtain ;dl 
that it desires — but when they come to details (of which they 
are very fond) those details are simply the maximum conceiv- 
able demands of the enemy in his present state ! All the 
statistics arc enemy statistics. The future envisaged is a future 
