hesitations will disappear. Half-measures are weakness and will prolong the war. If we say: "Some of us will boycott and others won't. Some of us will do it a little and others not at all. We don't mean to destroy your trade, but we won't promise to give it a fair chance," well, then, the weapon has been thrown away. There can be no transaction on these lines. It is fumbling like this which may lead to an inconclusive peace. The fuller our offer of economic peace, the more shall we get in return for it. The more united and decided our threat of economic war, the less risk is there that it will have to be enforced.

re

The answer will come frankly at this point from a section of our public opinion, that it does regard discrimination against German trade as a substantive war aim. The motives which go to make this attitude are complex. For some minds the chief factor is an instinctive repugnance, half-ethical, half-esthetic, to resume normal lations with an enemy whose conduct of war has been neither chivalrous nor humane. One might argue that our resentment in this case will strike the wrong heads. The agrarian Junker hereditary military caste will not suffer under a boycott; the value of its landed estates and agricultural produce may even be enhanced by it. It is the modern democratic Germany, workmen no less than masters, who will suffer. But the stronger this feeling is, the less need is there to legislate to enforce it. While this resentment lasts, it will make a spontaneous boycott. These sentimental tendencies, though they may influence the conduct of individuals after the war, would hardly suffice to shape our national policy, were it not for a much graver and more practical consideration. This country has realized, as it never did before, the immense strength of the German people. What

ever its temporary losses may be through the reduction of its male population and the embarrassment of its finances, the moral and intellectual backbone of its strength will survive. The indestructible elements of German power are neither at the forges of Essen nor in the docks of Kiel; they are the discipline, the patriotism, the trained intelligence and the habit of regulated industry in its people. If we have learned to know our enemy's strength, we have also discovered from our own experience how closely military power is related to economic organization. Each coalition has been sustained by the financial and industrial capacity of one of its members. Inevitably the further thought arises, that if the power of Germany for offense is to be broken, we must not only smash her military machine, but lame her economic strength as well.

The premise of all this reasoning is, be it noted, that neither the experiences of this war nor the reflections which will follow it are likely to modify the mentality of the Prussian military caste, or to weaken its ascendency over the German people. Germany is conceived as an incurably aggressive element, which will learn nothing save new methods of attack, and forget nothing save the losses it has suffered. Starting with this conviction, the movement which would organize a "war after the war" is dominated by a pessimism of which it is only half aware. It seems to have forgotten the hopes which found expression in every Allied country during the early months of the war. In England and France men went to the colors, and endured the privations of three winters, buoyed by the resolve that their sons should grow up in a better world. "Never again" was the motto of all who thought amid the turmoil, and those who most

hated war comforted themselves with the thought that this should be "a war to end war." The one object on which all the Allies were bent was "the destruction of Prussian militarism." It is difficult today to bring these ideas into any relation with the forecast of the future which inspires the advocates of a boycott. Do they question the ultimate victory of the Coalition? Or do they doubt the possibility, by any victory, however complete, of destroying Prussian militarism? Certainly they assume that its menace must survive, and they look for security not to any constructive organization of the world's peace, but to the waging of a perpetual bloodless war, inspired by the same enmities, suspicions and fears that divide the world today. If this is a true forecast of the future, then the only victory which could have compensated mankind for the strife has already fled beyond our reach. We must abandon the dream of what Mr. Asquith called "a real European partnership," and content ourselves instead with a new phase of the armed peace, a Europe divided by a permanent Chinese wall, fenced with the barbed wire of the prohibitive tariff. The fading of our early illusions is not all loss. The vision of this nightmare future may be positive gain. For on one salutary truth these forecasts and proposals are firmly based. Those who expected from war alone, the crushing of militarism and the building of a better Europe, hoped from war what war can never yield. A step in such an evolution it may be. But the future depends on statesmanship as well as arms, and on the general will of the nations even more than on statesmanship. The assumption of our argument is that this stage is already in sight. There can be no question of abandoning the Paris Resolutions unless Germany

will give guarantees that her militarism is at an end. She must join in a general reduction of armaments. She must sign the pact of a League of Nations to enforce the peaceful settlement of disputes. She must confess the failure of militarism by renouncing conquests. If these conditions are satisfied, her high commercial development need no longer be regarded as the basis and foundation of a war-machine.

Dismiss these grounds for differentiating against German trade, and what remains? One need not pause to talk about "dumping" and "key industries." Such adjustments of our traditional fiscal policy as may be necessary to meet these minor problems can be carried out without infringing "economic peace." That phrase need not mean free trade. It means only the abandonment of special discriminations against particular foreign nations which rest on political or military grounds. The case for a boycott pursued as a substantive aim means in the last resort that its advocates are making a realist calculation, that our sea-power, our vast dominions, our ability to draw weaker States into our orbit, will enable us to practise an exclusive policy with material profit to ourselves. It is a hazardous, as it is an immoral calculation. We may assume the support of America and Russia for a tactical use of the boycott, threatened or imposed for the definite purpose of compelling Germany to abandon militarism. They will not back a boycott conceived as a means of enhancing British power or British wealth. They might even resent and combat it, as an abuse of our sea-power. Whether in these circumstances the boycott could be profitable may be doubted; it might in fact be ruinous. One is content in war if the balance slaughter is in one's own favor, and in a trade war the casualties cannot all

of

She has in

be on the other side. Whether Germany would, in fact, suffer more, depends partly on the extent to which her alliances survive the war, and partly on our own skill in managing a rather composite team of Allies. her favor the better and more practised organization, and there is a grave risk that if we fence ourselves round with tariffs, we shall be content with this passive defense, relapse into the laziness of security, and neglect to make good our defects in science and education. When one has built a high wall there is always a temptation to slumber in its shadow. These schemes, however, raise a much larger question than any financial balance of profit and loss. They would, indeed, alter the whole fabric of our industry, and leave their mark on every household budget. That would be their less momentous effect. They would also fix the emotions of whole peoples towards each other, and give to hatred its vested interest and its constitutional form. For this is not a proposal to adopt Protection as a fiscal system on its merits. The old Protection rested on the argument (fallacious as Free Traders contended) that certain measures of defense would be of advantage to our own trade and it applied these measures impartially against all foreigners. If it discriminated at all between different States, it was guided solely by the principle of reciprocity. The new Protection repudiates all pretense of impartiality, nor does it aim at reciprocity. A prohibitive tariff, in the usage of the old Protection, was a weapon with which to extort concessions. For the new Protection it is a confessedly aggressive device. The aim is less to protect or benefit ourselves than to injure others. So long

ment by its tariffs. But the nation which distinguishes in its custom houses between friendly and hostile foreigners must expect all the consequences of its act. The first reply will of course be a tariff of equal or even greater severity against our own trade. The next will be an adjustment of armaments and diplomacy to meet the fact proclaimed in word and deed by ourselves, that we are the sworn and unrelenting enemies of Germany. Against such a declaration a prudent people arms, seeks allies, and, at the appropriate moment, makes war. That disaster to civilization might, indeed, be postponed by the exhaustion of both sides for many years. But its postponement would enable us to enjoy none of the fruits of peace. We should not dare to disarm. We should not venture in full security to devote ourselves to our internal social problems, and the shadow of war would be over all our politics. The constant preoccupation with the certainty of a renewal of war would mean in the end what it meant for Prussia-the dominance of militarism over our civil life. Militarism is not an original sin or a vice in the blood. It is the adjustment of a nation's institutions and thoughts to the necessities of an "inevitable" war, which it cannot or will not avoid. But perhaps we would propose arbitration or set up a council of conciliation, or invite our enemy to come before an Areopagus? What mockery! The machinery of conciliation may one day banish war from the world, but only when nations first resolve to live in friendship and habitually guide their policy by a purpose of good will. In an atmosphere of good will, the League of Nations to which the Entente is now committed may serve to remove accidental misunderstandings and incidental conflicts of interest. In an atmosphere of deliberate hate, between peoples whose whole

policy was directed to the mutual infliction of injury, it would be a witless self-deception to hope for the peaceful settlement of any capital dispute.

The nation which believes

in conciliation as a substitute for war must guide its whole policy by that aim. It must proclaim no hatreds. It must engineer no boycotts. It must strive not to divide, but to unite, Europe. Let us in the name of honest thinking choose one course or the other. Peace demands a moral "preparedness" no less austere than that

of war.

At this point an answer may be anticipated from the advocates of the "war after the war." "We are not," they may reply, "legislating for all time. Some day Germany may break

up.

We

She may even pass through a revolution. If that happens, of course we will reconsider our scheme. want to meet the need of tomorrow, but we all hope for Areopagus and that sort of thing in the dim and distant future." The Areopagus, it may be retorted, will not come of itself; it will come only after sincere and earnest preparation. The man who prepares war must not expect peace. Nor should we forget that if once our traders adapt themselves to a high tariff wall, vested interests will be created which will resist a change. But let us deal with the suggestion that Germany would be likely to reform under this treatment. We have set out in this war to "crush German militarism." We can certainly frustrate its purposes, and we may also weaken for a time its formidable military machine. But militarism is a state of mind. It is the habitual reliance on force, either because one pursues ambitions which only force can realize, or because one dreads enemies, whom only force can restrain. It is the art of all statesmen who have to lead modern democracies, to

conceal the ambitions and play upon the fears. Every war, even in Germany, is represented as a war of defense, and every opponent as an aggressor. For years before this war German Imperialists suffered from a mania of persecution-a disease which commonly accompanies megalomania. It was commonly held, and sincerely held, that the formation of the Entente was inspired by an aggressive motive; it was described as an encircling movement, an Einkreisung, a "penning in" of Germany. Many books were written before and after the war in which our own motives were dissected. Count Reventlow's Der Vampir des Festlandes is, for example, an elaborate historical essay to prove that England always has followed this strategy, from the seventeenth century downwards, and that our motive now, as ever, is to crush a trade rival. Even Dr. Naumann, a charitable writer who avows a liking for England, sees in this war the inevitable conflict between our old-world individualistic trading system and the new, regulated, corporate trading of Germany. If the current suspicion of most Germans today is that we made the Entente and entered the war to destroy a commercial rival, one need not ask what the effect on them will be, if we carry out the accepted policy of a continued war on German trade after the peace. Our motive would stand in their eyes self-confessed. The reasoning might be hasty and lacking in subtlety (for the play of motive is really very complex), but enemies do not usually give each other the benefit of the doubt. Imagine the effect of such a revelation on German public opinion. There are men and parties who detest and combat Prussian militarism and desire a world from which war can be eliminated. They are not the Socialists and the Radicals alone, but such personalities as Professor

A

Delbrück, who has fought the policy of annexations, Herr Ballin, who has called for "the extirpation of the fever of armaments," and the late Chancellor himself, who stood pledged to the idea of a League of Nations. "peace of reconciliation" (to use the Reichstag's phrase) would give these men their chance. To them would rally the normal minds of common men who revolt from slaughter, and dread the ruin of a new period of arming and taxation. But the stoutest and bravest of these men would be silenced and baffled by the revelation that we meant after war to pursue the economic ruin of their country as our aim. The ablest neutral observers tell us that the internal transformation

This

is already visible. To proclaim our relenting hostility to the German people and our resolve to thwart it in its legitimate work of commerce is to unite it as one man against us. is not to crush Prussian militarism, but to destroy German Liberalism. There is one chance only that German thought may turn backward calmly and objectively to review the past and examine the causes of the war, and that chance is that in the settlement and after it the Allies so act as to dissipate the legend that their whole policy has been dictated by The Fortnightly Review.

envy and greed. This movement to create "a war after the war," unthinkingly, perhaps, and in innocence, is giving the lie to those who have proclaimed our idealistic purpose in the war, and confirming a calumny which will work against us in the future with a perpetuum mobile of strife. The man who causes it to be said of us that our aim in this war was something lower than a concern for the public law and the liberties of Europe, inflicts on us an injury more lasting, than any defeat. We shall win the war and achieve victory for our aims only if we can so shape our policy at the settlement and after it, that there shall emerge what Mr. Asquith has called "a real European partnership." There is much that must be changed in our economic policy, and for a policy of conservative individualism in trade there is no future. A closer regulation of commerce, the intervention of the State in the control of investments, shipping, and trusts, new devices in organization, and great advances in educationall these are inevitable. We may come closer to our Allies in the process, and enhance our own powers for defense. But security we shall not found, if we start from hatred to organize the ruin of another people. That way lies anarchy and the frustration of European order. H. N. Brailsford.

CHAPTER II.

Christina returned with her daughter-in-law to the flat. She had agreed to dine there, though for mere comfort's sake she would have preferred to go home to a solitary supper near her own dining-room fire, and the subsequent hour on the sofa with a book. But Lucilla was in a softened mood, and Christina made the most of it.

"It must be a good thing for children to be brought up religiously." said Lucilla, as they walked together. "I believe the habit of it sticks to you and scares you off wickedness in your later days. But no one cares about religion nowadays, mater; they really don't. No one observes Sunday or bothers about things like that. At least the people we know don't.