LAND 5-" WATER 
December 19, 1918 
LAND & WATER 
5 Ch^mcery Lsme^ Luidom, ir.C.2. Tel. HMtr, s8i8 
THrRSPA}\ DECEMBER 19. iqiS 
VICTORY 
WE^haye beaten them. Four and a half years 
a^. strong in their " shining armour," they 
challenged the worid; to-day. defeated and 
divided, they lie at our mercy. The bulk of 
their fleet has been surrendered to us. Belgium 
has been evacuated. The French have recovered Alsace- 
LoiraiDe. Thousands of pins and locomotives have been 
surraadered. British troops are maichii^ through Cologne ; 
G>blenz and the fortress of Ehrenbreitstein are in .\llied hands ; 
oar prisoDers are streaming bact ; theirs are still in our hands. 
The Kaiser is a contemptible refugee in Holland, and a 
Republic has spning up behind him ; and the chief out- 
standing question is the amount of the reparation that the 
Germans can and should pa}* to the Powers whom they 
wantonly assaikd. 
Foot years ago the questioa was "Can we save the world? ' 
So also three years ago. two jeais ago. one year ago. The 
answer always was " We must." bat we never knew how 
many 3?ears and how much blood it woold take to ensure 
that salvaticn. To-day the work has been done, and the 
oidy question is " How can we most wisely use the victory ? " 
Not for a kng time shall we be able to gi^ the events of these 
crowded inars in proper pei spe c tiv e. and it requires a great 
effort of the imaginatioo to recall the cbai^iii^ scales and 
emotions ol the cooflicL We can teO oaisdves. yet we 
can hardly believe that thoe was a time when Loid Kitdioitf 
advertised in the papers for 500.000 moi. and that there 
was also a time wfaoi his reputed prophecy that the war 
^wold last three years, sent a chill down the K»r«inn«; of 
half those who heard it, and was lidicnled by the other half 
as the cynidsm of a hard man. or the pn^ihecy of a soldia- 
wiK> was insofficiaBtiy acqaainted wifli politics. Poor yeais 
ago the Old Array and the fiist Tenitadals were im^n g 
on in Flanders by their teeth. The town ai^ the towos 
<rf YpRS still stood, thoogfa somewhat damaged. Imperial 
Rnssia was slo«^ devtjoping her strei^th in the field ; 
Greece, Bolgaiia. Roomania and a donn other States later 
to be faroq^ in were stiO neatrak ; people w4k> did not 
know how inr n rnp a ti H e an allianoe die Tiiplice had been, 
even qwyn hte d as to which side Italy woold, ultimately 
join. Berostocfi was still bosy in America, with a kx^ run 
before him ; the Tsar was his Aroqr s kiol ; Francis Joseph 
and Tlsxa were great figures; we had never heard of 
Mkhaelis or Heitling. of Tanks. "Archies." Spanish 
mfl ii ntra ; the old liberal Govemmoit was in office ; 
the wud " Lansdowneism " had no meaning We cata- 
kjgoe this hotch-potch of great tlungs and small 
in an attenqit to suggest, rather than to measure, 
the distance we have tnvdled. Probably m no previous 
foBT years in the worid's hfetory have changes so mnkitadinoas. 
changes political and sodal. changes in maps and manner, 
oatkm^ habit and dream, taken place. And roOii^ akmg 
under tl» changing surface ol thinp has gone die movement 
<rf the war. a movement now seen in r eti ospeU as. with all 
its Iccal variations, almost as steady and ine\itaUe as the 
progress of the stars, «r of a great tragedy. Germany d^ed 
the wodd ; the world slowly closed round her, and she fell. 
She lies prostrate and the worid is disciESii^ her fate. 
But the virtory is not yet cooqilete. We were fighting 
Germany : but in fi^htiog her we wiere fi^itii^ certamtfaii^s 
of which she was the great embodiment. .\5 long as she 
stood armed with her weapons and her con\-ictions, the 
worid was not " safe," either for " democracy " or for any- 
thing else. The pace of human progress is largely determined 
by the actions of the most bactw-ard members of the hiunan 
family. If one nation prepares for attack, other nations- 
must ine\itably prepare for defence. Enormous armaments, 
conscription, national preoccupation with preparations for 
strife, national subordination of ideas of liberty to the prime 
necessity- of self-preservation, can never be local. One great 
Power, if allowed to tread the Prussian path, can largelv 
determine the actions of the others. " You cannot," said 
Carlyle, " throw a stone without shifting the centre of 
gra\-ity of the earth " ; all human affairs are inextricably 
inter»\)ven. The armaments and the philosoph}' of Ger- 
many in time of peace exercised a ^direct effect upon our 
elections, regulated in part the amount of taxation ever\- 
one of us paid, affected the emplo\Tnent of masses of our 
dtizens. and influenced, through the pressure, if not of fear, 
at least of the resol\-e to eliminate just cause for fear, our 
attitude towards e\-er>- sort of political and sodal question. 
That was in time of peace ; in war, Germany has been able 
actually to dictate to the greater part of the world's popula- 
tion what they should do, what they should eat. and to 
millions of them when they should die. It was of all this 
that President Wilson was thinking when he talked of makine 
the worid " safe." 
Militarism, dj-nastic ambition, the theory of keefring subject 
nations under : thee things, if allowed to flourish, can largeh- 
dictate and regulate the lives of the most pacific of mankind. 
and actually jw^vent the full growth, even on the most 
favouiaUe soils, of the full fruits of liberty, equality and 
fraternity, because of the danger and the dread. We shall 
n»t have completed our victory unless we not merely prevent 
the revival of militarism in Germany, but also take steps 
to prevent the future developmeait, whether by acddent 
or design, of such an atmo^iha-e of fears, su^adons. threats 
and the rattling of arms as we lived in before 1914. The 
peoples of the worid must unite in a compact of peace so 
dose that an aggressive war will henceforth be an undertaking 
f(xedoomed to failure ; they must deliberately set themselves 
to dev^p both a machinery and a ^)irit which will before 
Icmg produce the realitj- and the soise of security which 
must in the end lead to the prt^refsive redaction of those 
armaments which have impeded human progress throughout 
past histoiy. The most important " war-aim," the supreme 
war-aim, is the League of Nations. The great masses of 
the people in every country, ignorant though they maj- 
be of paper sdiemes and the language of diidomacy, are 
at one in their deare to lead thdr lives peacefully at their 
own WOTk in their own homes. A plebisdte an^-where on the 
simple qoesti<m " Ought war to be abolished or not ? " would 
get an enormous majority in favour; and if the worid's 
statesmen, throogfa indolence or cynidsm or jealousy, were^ 
to miss this opportunity of making the League of Nations, 
a reality, our victory wiU have r^ted the. worid for a 
generation or two, but it will not have made it permanently 
safe. However tired we may be. it is our duty from now 
nntil the Congress nevCT for one momeit to forget what 
this war has been and what the next war will be. 
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