not hold their life at a high price. If then, by any chance, a stray shot starts a popular uprising, and if, as is not inconceivable, the army itself proves to be infected with revolutionary ideas, the change that will come over the spirit of German life may be as complete and startling as any in human history. The millions of intelligent German workers, who have so wonderfully managed their trade unions, their co-operative stores and their Socialist Party would be able to organize a revolution quite as thoroughly. Of course they will not rebel while they believe that a collapse of Germany would mean her spoliation by enemies at the frontier. They may not even rebel after the war. And yet they may. Only a rash prophet would predict that German society and the German state of mind will be the same, ten, five or even two years hence as they are today.

Even before the war the prestige of the German ruling classes was gradually sinking, and a few more decades of peace might easily have brought it to an end. Nothing but a complete German victory can now make the war worth its cost, and even a complete victory may fail to do so. Defeated, or merely frustrated, Germany's rulers would have to go back to their people comparatively empty-handed. It would be the beginning of the end of her militarism.

The education of the German people during the war will be continued in peace. They will then have

ample time to count their dead and maimed, cast up their losses, and apportion the blame-and the taxes. They will not be entirely proud of their record. The German commercial traveller in foreign lands will hear many unpleasant truths, and what is told him he will tell again. Credulity, prejudice, passion will in a measure pass. The judgment of the outside world, tempered by the calmness of peace, will have its appeal. The foreign arraignment of their ruling classes will eventually be accepted as true by those Germans who for political reasons desire to attack their government.

A frustration of Germany thus means a growth of democracy, a change in her political balance of power and a revolution in her opinions and prepossessions, which will cause submissiveness to decline and render improbable a new attack.

CHAPTER XI

A CONCLUSIVE PEACE

In a speech delivered in January, 1918, former President Roosevelt said: "We must accept no peace except the peace of overwhelming victory. To accept an inconclusive peace would mean that the whole war would have to be fought over again by ourselves or our children. To accept an inconclusive peace would really mean to work for a German victory."

According to Mr. Roosevelt there is no "half way ground." "Either we are fighting to give liberty to the subject races in Austria and Turkey, either we are fighting for the complete independence of the Czecho-Slovaks, the Jugo-Slavs, the Poles, the Rumanians, and Italians under the Austro-Hungarian yoke, and the Armenians and Jews and Syrian Christians and Arabs under the Turkish yoke, or else we were guilty of hypocrisy when we announced that our purpose was to make the world safe for democracy. Unless Belgium is restored and indemnified and France restored and indemnified justice will not have prevailed." 1

The fundamental assumptions in this vigorous speech of Mr. Roosevelt's are that no peace can be 1 New York Times, January 13, 1918.

conclusive unless the victory is overwhelming, and that such a conclusive victory can be rendered more secure by the imposition of drastic terms. In making these assumptions, Mr. Roosevelt has gone back to the methods of thought which prevailed on both sides in the early part of the war. First victory, then onerous terms imposed upon the defeated enemy, and finally the furtherance of such aims as the victors consider essential. That some of those aims may be imperialistic, and may have the effect of undermining any international basis for the peace proposed does not seem to enter into his serious consideration. The internationalism which is associated with this method of thought is not in any sense unforced, but rather the imposition upon the law-breaking nations of an international law in the interests of the victors. That in each country the law-breaking nation is assumed to be the enemy goes without saying.

The remainder of Mr. Roosevelt's speech indicates clearly the state of international relations which he anticipates in the event of his overwhelming victory. After, as before, we shall be required to arm to the teeth in order permanently "to guarantee future peaceful and just development at home, and future immunity from attacks by outside nations." Mr. Roosevelt's overwhelming victory does not lead to peace, but merely to a permanent military preparedness and a permanent liability to attack.

Even though we hoped for nothing but this indefinite perpetuation of latent hostilities, it is doubtful whether Mr. Roosevelt's overwhelming victory would be efficacious. Its effect, of course, would be to annihilate the military strength of Germany, which might or might not be a permanent advantage. Assuming a continuance of hostile international relations, it does not follow that our next enemy will surely be Germany. But the chief argument against the presumed necessity of a conclusive victory is that such a victory does not necessarily lead to a conclusive peace, but may have an exactly opposite effect.

In 1866, when Prussia won a decisive victory over Austria, the peace was conclusive not because the victory was overwhelming, but because the natural evolution of the German nation made impossible a leadership by Austria, a preponderatingly non-German state. On the other hand, the German victory over France in 1870 was crushing, but the peace was inconclusive. It was a punitive peace, based on outlived conceptions of international life, and did not, in effect, solve the outstanding problems between the two countries. The result was that for almost half a century the war between France and Germany continued under a different form. Similarly a nonconclusive war may lead to a conclusive peace. In 1812 the United States fought a somewhat inglorious war with Great Britain, which ended in no vic