November 14, 1918 
LAND &> WATER 
THE ARMISTICE: By HILAIRE BELLOC 
Reaping the Fruits of Victory 
WE are all fairly clear as to the distinction 
between an armistice and the terms of peace. 
Lest there should be any confusion between 
the two when the negotiations begin, and lest 
anyone should be surprised by the contrast 
which will certainly appear between those terms of peace and 
the terms of the armistice, let us consider the difference 
between them. 
The terms of peace imposed upon a defeated enemy are 
limited by two considerations : what we desire to obtain by 
our victory and what we can in practice obtain. 
For instance, when the victor says he will not exasperate 
his defeated enemy, what he means is that the enemy retains 
sufficient strength, or will acquire sufficient strength in the 
future, to make such exasperation dangerous. Again, the 
victor does not rationally demand things which are of no 
service to him ; or if he does, he probably only hampers 
himself by*those demands and the acquisition of such things, 
just as that mechanical and now hopelessly extinct experi- 
ment called the "German Empire" weakened itself by the 
annexation of Metz, and still more by its policy in the matter 
of the defeated Poles. . 
The motive,, therefore, underlying the Treaty of Peace, 
and particularly an imposed peace — that is, a peace dictated 
to an enemy iacapable of any military resistance — are essen- 
tially political. An armistice has nothing in common with 
the peace terms to be imposed ; it may on the surface look 
far more severe than the peace terms are likely to be ; or it 
may, on the contrary, be apparently surprisingly mild. But 
its object is always the same, and that object (when it is 
imposed upon a defeated foe, and not negotiated between 
equals) is always to leave the military power of the defeated 
foe at the mercy of his \ictor. If that object can be obtained 
by mild means, there is no sort of reason why more severe 
means should be employed, and the proposal to applv such be- 
longs rather to the theatrical misconception of war. (an essen- 
tially German error, by the way) than to sober military art. 
For instance, if you have so disarmed your enemy that 
his remaining armament is hardly adequate to i^aintain the 
struggle, there is no reason why you should demand the 
surrender of his remaining armies. " It is simpler to demand 
the surrender of so much as will leave him impotent. Again. 
an armistice has nothing to do with the punishment of 
individuals or of corporations. That it frequently demands, 
as in this great armistice, the occupation of towns 
and avenues for the passage of armies. But it does not 
demand these with a punitory intention — that would 
belong to the terms of peace — it demands such occupation 
with a purely military intention, to wit, the prevention of 
another military operation on the part of the defeated enemy. 
If we bear this distinction in mind we shall, I think, arrive 
at a conclusion that -the terms of the armistice debated all 
last Sunday night, and imposed upon what was the German 
Army at five o'clock in the morning of Monday, are wise 
and sufficient to render the remnants of that army incapable 
of further action, and at the same time do not waste efforts 
in theatrical accessories. The space of time given for evacua- 
tion is a long one, and there again one sees the character of 
common sense in this document. The moving of these very- 
great masses, the provisioning of them, the checking of 
material, its inspection so that there may be no false play- 
all these things are of lengthy and complicated progress. 
To fix too short a limit of time would be to miss the whole 
object of the Arrangement. (What follows was urriilen before 
the signing of the armistice.) 
With the military problem of the war virtually decided 
there arises a political problem, one among many, but the 
foremost among many which is occupying, I think, the mind 
of every reasoning man upon the side' of the Allies. And 
this is the problem of reaping the fruits of victory. 
Let us be first of all clear upon what this term means.. 
There is ap-mood— very bewildering to those who do not 
share it— in which men hesitate to act strongly against what 
has always been strong. 
Things have moved to such a pass in the last few days. 
The conception of the "German Empire" (or, as it is usually 
and erroneously called, Germany, as though it were a true 
nation), is something still of the same sort as we have known 
during the last forty odd years, and especially diiring the 
last twenty-five, when it increasingly proposed to dominate 
Europe. The mood of which I speak has no hesitation in 
permitting— though it regrets— atrocious cruelty against the 
weak, but it is awe-struck when it is asked to act against the 
strong, and those who suffer from this mood and who are 
still entangled in it, still believe— they will not believe it 
for many days more— that this thing which they have called 
"Germany," and thought a nation, is still strong. 
THE RIGHT TO JUSTICE 
To talk of reaping the fruits of victory has for men in this 
mood something immoral about it. "They feel shocked. 
They assure us that we must not be "vindictive" — that is, 
that one must not avenge, or, in other words, one must not 
redress the balance of justice. They still maintain, as they 
maintained nine months ago when European civilisation was 
at its worst peril from the insolence of Prussia, after all we 
are one family, and that the whole thing has been nothing 
more than a great misunderstanding. They will have it 
that our own interests being obviously bound up with the 
interests of the vanquished (the victor and the vanquished 
always have common interests, as have a master and a ser- 
vant), the destruction of the vanquished (whatever that may 
mean), is unwise. Some of them are so foolish as even at this 
moment to continue discussing the danger of humiliating 
this imaginary "Germany" : so that we are to bear every 
humiliation and no great harm is done, but that the various 
authors of our sufferings are to go free. 
Now to this mood— which is not widespread, but which 
is intense— it is impossible to reply. It is a religion, like the 
religion of the worthy people who let cattle loose in Canada 
because they think it wrong to shut the poor animals up ; 
or like the religion of certain Asiatics who strangle people 
m honour of their goddess. You cannot argue with a per- 
version of the mind. All you can do is to restrain it— that 
is, to isolate it and to let it die. 
Most people, I say, are not at this moment of victory 
concerned with the right to make those who have done the 
evil atone for the evil, purge their own souls, and at the same 
time rehabilitate those whom tftey have despoiled. Most 
people are concerned with the much more practical question 
of how it should be done, and especially of what the present 
conditions of anarchy which are beginning to show themselves 
in the various German States mean amid the realisation of 
victory. At this point it is only right that a tribute should 
be paid to those who have insisted that revolution in Ger- 
many was possible, and that the slovenly example of Russia 
might be catching along the Baltic coast : the example of 
letting go the discipline of society, and consuming its accumu- 
lated values in a riot of orgy. For my part I never believed 
that the thing would happen. I thought the North Germans, 
especially those of the Baltic littoral, too stupid and too 
sheeplike for the exercise of any such initiative. But it seems 
that defeat, especially when it is only suddenly realised, 
will affect even the sluggish blood of those races, and that 
the curious solidity of their dumb obedience dissolves, and 
quickly, under the action of certain acids. Those acids have 
been applied and chaos has come. 
Now in the presence of that chaos the plain man asks 
himself with justice, "How far will it prevent our achieving 
the right end, which end is the punishment of the evil doer, 
reparation and all the rest of it ?" 
A man does you some abominable injury. You go out 
to execute justice upon him. You have to struggle very 
hard and to suffer greatly before you can even cripple him. 
You cripple him at last : you down him. But when he is 
downed he deludes you by the change of form. It is the.old 
legend of Proteus. 
If you analyse the situation you will discover something 
like this: "I can make the Hohenzollerns give up their 
fleet, but why ? Because their fleet would still obey the 
Hohenzollerns and, being told to steam to such and such a 
point and surrender, would steam to that point and surrender. 
I could get an indemnity from the German Empire organised 
under the Hohenzollerns, but why ? Because I could have 
got them to issue paper which I would have held, and which, 
so long as there was still an organised govcrrmert. I could 
have compelled the populace by its'labour to redeem. But 
