Land & Water 
July 4, 1918 
l>o Mjriously denied I)y all those who coiml among the group 
I am considering ; nevertheless, it does run through their 
thought, and is indeed a necessary implication of their 
thought. There is always implied in what they say the 
sujjposition that with an undefeated Prussia negotiating, 
a' European system, balanced as ours was supposed to be 
balanced in iQi.l, would ro-arise. 
In this there are two great errors. First, the idea that a 
military victory does not affect the future, quite apart from 
whether it is followed up by further military action ; and, 
secondly, the idea that the old certitudes of Europe have 
not been affected by the wai". 
Jioth ideas arc grievously wrong. The enemy has so far 
achieved, indirectly, indeed, but still has achieved, a military 
victory of the utmost consequence. He has destroyed Russia, 
and on its ruins he has built up his Central State. When 
you make peace after a victory, and before undoing the effects 
of the victory, the consequences of the victory go on in- 
definitely. You might have no further fighting within the 
lifetime of men now young ; but you would have the renewed 
and repeated claims of the victor to this and to that ; the 
perpetual interference of his power ; the threat of his capacity 
to renew and complete his task ; the situation would be 
what is familiarly called "the squeeze." By just so much 
as one man had learnt to dread Prussian war, by just so 
much would the Prussian squeeze be continuously effective. 
The thing has been put first, I think, by Mr. Maetzu, after 
that by several other acute observers in a single phrase : 
" If you leave Prussia to organise the Slavs she is the mistress 
of tiic world." For an undefeated Prussia means a Prussia 
left at liberty to organise the Slavs at will. 
What Prussia has already organised in Central Europe 
as her dependency is superior 'in numbers to all that the 
West can bring forward. What she could threaten us with 
a generation hence would be more than double what all the 
West could meet it with. It would be more than treble 
what Britain and France could bring forward. Europe 
simply could not stand up against it. And when one has 
such power one does not have to use it. Western Europe 
would live then for the ne.Kt generation as France lived during 
the last generation, but without that unity of tradition which 
makes a single nation sometimes capable of revival and of 
restoring its position. 
The fourth and last element in the make-up of those who 
would surrender is the most respectable : I mean the most 
intellectually respectable. It is the conception that no 
matter w'hat the magnitude of the issue, therCvis another 
issue greater still, and that is the survival of Europe as a 
whole. There is a degree of panic or of fatigue in which a 
man conceives of this war as the suicide of Europe. Men 
thus affected argue very truly that parallels from past wars 
are false in this : Their losses were not comparable to the 
present losses. The rate of loss in men and in material 
(and in the political factor of social cohesion also) is already 
alarming. The pacifist believes it will quite soon become 
disastrous. 
Now here we have only judgment against judgment. 
The Real Europe 
It is not a demonstrable thing. It is a thing of taste and 
conscience. If, in order to save what must yet be spent a 
halt is called, will the thing that survives really be Europe 
at all ? Those who think of the Italian cities as one pleasant 
summer's experience during a tour and the German cities 
as anoth(;r ; those vv^ho, in comparing the great minds of 
European civilisation, give the same weight to the Gennan 
metaphysicians as they do to the clearer traditions of phil- 
osophy ; those who find Berlin a well-built and pleasing 
city and its habits no worse than the habits of Rome ; those 
who note in the equal approval the cleanliness of Frankfurt 
and the colour of Toledo and think all these things so manv 
units of equal value ; those who judge Europe thus may say 
" Let us call a halt and save what we can of Europe. " 
But Europe is not a map. It is not a congeries of many 
countries including the modern German Empire, each of 
which countries is to count as one in an arithmetical sum, 
or to count even more mechanically according to its head of 
population for the moment. Europe is a living organisation, 
and it has a soul. If we concede the Prussian thesis— and 
we do concede it by leaving Prussia undefeated — then that 
undefeated Prussia will go on to the great practical proof of that 
thesis : it will poison and rapidly destroy the soul of Europe. 
Already academic men are talking of indiscriminate murder 
at sea as in some way "modern," and, therefore, necessary 
if war is waged at all. Luckily the seamen think otherwise. 
It is this truth which makes the difference so great in 
•different countries between the proportion of pacifists which 
they bear. (We can eliminate the International Socialist 
and the international financier. They are not pacifists. 
They are men indifferent to our race.) If among the Allies 
this type is commoner here than elsewhere, it is because 
historical accident has largely cut us off from Europe in the 
immediate past. None the less this island lives by the life 
of Europe as truly as does any other part of that great body. 
That which has attacked Europe spiritually from without 
(though geographically within its boundaries) ; that which 
has boasted its contempt for the traditions of Europe and 
would master Europe, is something mortal to Europe. If you 
accept it Europe dies, and if, Europe dies you die. The soil 
will remain, and millions of human beings will remain upon 
it. They will continue their material activities, but the 
spirit which moulded them and to which you owe all the great 
monuments of the past and all your own security oi s^ul, 
will be broken. 
Mrs. Drew, nee Miss Mary Gladstone, is a person who 
-inspires voluminous correspondence, if any judgment may 
ba based on the collection of letters, addressed to her, pub- 
lished under the title Some Hawarden Letters, edited by L. 
.March Phillips and Bertram Christian (Nisbet, 15s.) Such 
material, collected from correspondence extending from 1878 
to 1913, gives a kaleidoscopic view of the life of the later 
Victorians ; Burne Jones, Ruskin, Browning, James Stiiart, 
Lord Acton, J. R. Illingworth, are names that may be selected 
at random from among the many that figure as writers in 
these pages, and in the names themselves is evidence that the 
work is a picture of the times' with which it deals, a volume 
of general rather than personal interest. The subjects 
treated range through all affairs that merit discussion, from 
women's suffrage to the "elements of greatness," and that 
is a far cry ; there are spscks, and sometimes more than 
specks, of didacticism, thoroughly characteristic of the age 
which these letters represent, and here and there are views 
which to these days seem odd — but there is a good deal of 
real wisdom as well. It is a book to take up again and again, 
not the sort of volume that one would read through solidly, 
but rather a medley of thought and ideas which will attract 
in many moods, and perhaps induce a regret, that these times 
are not so productive of leisure as the 'eighties and 'nineties, 
when the art of conversation had not finally died and that of 
letterwriting was still flourishing. 
Mr. Blackwell wins merit with the Sheldonian series of reprints 
and renderings of masterpieces in all language . They are most 
pleasant little books to gaze on, and the printing, on hand-made 
paper, 1 a delight. The two that lie before us are the Ballades 
of Francois Villon, interpreted into English verse by Paul 
Hoolihan, and Peucte's Funeral Oration, Englished (not a happy 
word !) by Thomas Hobbes, of Malmesbury. Each volume is 
published at half a crown, and Mr, Blackwell. the friend, philo- 
sopher, and guide of O.xford book-lovers, would welcome sugges- 
tions for subsequent volumes. 
Le Rire de Paris: By Emile Cammaerts 
Du Luxembourg k Notre Dame 
De la Bastille au Pantheon 
Bat le sang et reve I'ame 
D'une grave nation. 
La France peut railler ailleurs, 
Mais elle ne raille pas ou repose son coeur 
Et ou couve sa flamme, 
Du Luxembourg a Notre Dame. 
Pour reveiller ses morts 
II faut la voix des bombes et des canons. 
Pour reveiller son coeur qui dort 
De la Bastille au Pantheon. 
Pour egayer ses levres 
II faut de longues nuits de fievre. 
Pour egayer sa bouche qui clame 
Du Luxembourg a Notre Dame. 
Pour decouvrir ses dents, il faut 
Que le gouffre d'Enfer souvre large et sans fond 
Et que sa fumee monte si haut 
Qu'elle cache la Bastille et voile le Panthfen. 
C'est I'heure.ou Ton entend le grand coeur de la France 
Tressauter de misere et rugir de souffrance, 
Ou son rire surgit, comme I'eclair d'une lame, 
Des toits du Luxembourg aux tours de Notre Dame ! 
[all rights reserved.] 
