LAND 6? WATER 
September 26, 19 IS 
reparation and jnstice. But there runs through all — or 
nearly all— their ditferent judgments one term which, if it is 
inaccurately used, vitiates all their conclusions. That term 
is the word "Germany." 
We ought to be clear upon tliat term before deciding upon 
any policy. If in speaking thus of "Germany,," we are 
■among unrealities, if we are talking of something that is not 
there, or that may not be there after the war, then we are 
acting and debating in the void. We shall be like the French 
Revolutionaries who appealed to an imaginary English 
people ground down by a wicked tyrant called George III., 
whose Bastille was the Tower of London. Or we shall be 
like the people nearer home who thought that Poland was 
a certain province of Russia, or that the Russian people, 
oppressed by a Tsar, desired nothing more passionately 
than a Parliament with "chair," "working opposition," and 
"front benches" all complete, and that, provided with this, 
they would be secure in freedom. . . . Three-quarters of 
statesmanship lies in the appreciation of material. The 
other quarter is principle applied. Mistake tlie nature of 
your material, and your application of principle fails, 
TYPICAL PRONOUNCEMENTS 
Here are a set of phrases upon this material of our victory 
taken at random from recent public pronouncements in 
print and speech. They are, I think, typical : 
We have no desire to crush Germany. 
Germany must pay the penalty of her crimes. 
Even if it were advisable, it is not possible to destroy 
Germany. 
We must allow, after all, for the existence of Germany 
after the war. 
No League of Nations can be stable that does not include 
Germany. 
Germany will not, for a generation at least, be admitted 
into the amity of civilised nations. 
We have no quarrel with Germany, but only with German 
militarism. 
Germany must never again be allowed to monopolise 
the key-industries. 
Well, what is this entity "Germany"? What do they 
mean who talk of it thus as though it were a certain per- 
manent and clearly definable thing now present, existent, 
suffering defeat at last, but with its survival taken for 
granted ? 
This word "Germany" so used connotes two perfectly 
distinct ideas, yet those ideas are confused as a rule in 
the minds of those who use the word. It is a pity, because 
it warps and vitiates all discussion upon the chief problem 
of the war. 
The first idea connoted by the word is the German Empire 
as it had existed since 1871, and up to the fatal 28th July, 
1914. The second idea is the conception that this recent 
and rather artificial arrangement will comfortably endure 
after the war is won. 
In other words, people talk about "Germany" as though 
it were an ancient country like France or England, posses.' ing 
a strong organic unity, and enjoying what all true nations 
enjoy, something of the responsibihty and affection which 
you find in an individual. Well, that idea is completely 
false. How far rapidly increasing wealth and the memory 
of former striking victories (coupled with a considerable body 
of common modern habits recently grown up) may have 
welded together the different parts of this artificial state is 
a matter for debate. Some think that its cohesion in times 
of great prosperity and peace would disappear entirely under 
adversity. Others that it will remain, though weakened. 
But the point is that whether strong enough to outlast the 
war in outward aspect, or so weak as to disappear altogether, 
the bond is artificial ; it is mechanical not organic. 
The German Empire is not a nation. It is a large body of 
the German race organised under the spirit of Prussia, which 
is partly German in character and very alien in its strongest 
features to the general tradition of German civilization. It 
excludes the German people of the Middle Danube ; it in- 
cludes a great mass of Poles and a smaller number in Alsace- 
Lorraine who in the first case have nothing to do with the 
German race, but are bitterly opposed to it, and in the second 
cas2, though mainly of the German speech, are as much the 
enemies of Prussia as the French themselves. 
Bismarck, the creator of this let us hope, ephemeral and 
certainly maleficent thing, conjured with the ancient and 
tolerable ideal of German unity : The ideal of one great 
State wherein should be combined all those men Who are at 
once of German speech (in its various dialects) and of so much 
as is in common among them of habits and customs. 
He used that tolerable ideal solely to the profit of the Hohen- 
zollern dynasty which he served, and of that Prussia which 
is not a nation but a system, a predatory system run by a 
clique into which he himself was born. He carefully arranged,, 
did this man of genius, throughout all his schemes of the 
middle nineteenth century, that there should not be a German 
unity ; he carefully calculated what proportion of Southern 
Germans — whom he knew to be the chief obstacle to the 
domination of Prussia — should be included in this sham 
German Empire of his. He carefuDy excluded Austria — 
that is the Austrian Germans, and he produced something 
which is not the free expression of the German mind, nor 
its unity at all, but a truncated thing which Prussia could 
permeate and control. It is the Prusgian Materialist mood 
which has produced the horrors of this war, much more than 
the mere stupidity native to the German. It is the Prussian 
dryness and mechanical folly which has produced the defeat 
of the. enemy, much more than the slowness of the German 
mind: though that also has helped. It is the native Prussian' 
Atheism much more than the sloppy German vagueness. 
■ which has condemned the chiefs among our enemies to the. 
misunderstanding of mankind. 
Well, when the battle is over and this unpleasing thing' 
has been struck down, the glue which kept together the- 
artificial combination called the German Empire will be' 
dissolved. There must still be in Europe, and will continue: 
to be, the imperfect, imitative, upon the whole genial, perhaps', 
worthy German race. It is quite unfit to rule; it is still' 
more unfit to conduct crusades. Indeed, with the latter" 
form of human energy it is bewildered, and it cannot under- 
stand what there may be glorious about a just war. But he; 
is a fool who denies to that German race its secondary apti^ 
tudes ; its kindliness, which is the good side of its stupidity ; 
its confused visions, which are the good side of its senti- ' 
mentality. It will not do very- much for Europe in Ibe 
future, nor, if you take a sane and comprehensive view, 
has it in the great flood of Christendom done very naturh in 
the past. It has produced no missionaries ; veny few 
artists ; not a single native institution. It has bomiowed, 
adapted, and served. But it is there. Those wh® say you 
cannot reckon after the war with a Europe without Germans 
talk such obvious sense that it ought not to have to be 
written : But those who say that you will have to reckon 
with "Germany," — meaning, of course, the German Empire 
of the forty-three years before the war — are not talking 
sense. They are not talking nonsense because had Prussia 
won her prestige would have left her the master of that 
docile soft people whom she has used as the material of her 
rule. But they are talking what the late Samuel Butler - 
called hypothetics — that is, they are talking of something 
that may be, not of something that must be, still less of. 
something that is. , 
NO GERMAN NATION 
This war, like all wars, and especially all great warr, is a* 
bringer in of reahties, and among realities are the csalities 
of race and nation and State. There is no German nation. 
There is a German race which has never been able ttj)form 
a great State, and probably never could, for it has not within 
it that principle of self-discipline, that hard core in the^soufi 
whence Great States arise. It must always be in flux, fluid, . 
receptive of foreign influence, changing its domestic boun- 
daries. But, quite certainly, this last particular arrange- 
ment of a portion of the German tribes under Prussia is 
not fixed. There is nothing permanent or necessary about 
it at all. 
After the defeat of their chiefs we shall all see that quite 
clearly. Meanwhile, awaiting that defeat which now rapidly 
approaches, let us not live in the past. What the Allies will 
have to deal with when Prussia and her vileness have received 
their reward, will not be the Prussian thing which calls itself 
the German Empire. It will be the various but similar 
German peoples. It will be the German Cantons of Swit- 
zerland, the Austro-Germans in the Middle Danube ; the 
Southern German States ; the Northern Germans of the - 
Baltic Plain ; what may al^o be called in a large view of his- 
tory, the German tradition. It is worthy of respect and even • 
were it not worthy of respect it must be recognised. It is; 
not ephemeral ; it is not even what we are fighting. Prussia' 
is what we are fighting. Those who have allowed Prussia 
to rule them and who have committed the abominations; 
with which Prussia inspired them must, of course, suffer fo-r 
some time the consequences of their misdeeds. But with 
Prussia defeated in the field they will be disenchanted. They \ 
will be at our mercy nt is true, but we have no occasion to 
exercise anytliing mor? than justice against them. It is 
a Prussia — that is, the State organised for loot — that must 
and will disappear. For its assertion of existence is victory, 
and defeat will kill it. 
