"unwhipped of justice," and retain his throne; yet this feature may be of little concern, for when the Allies shall win this war, the German people may relieve the Allies of the burden of destroying the Hohenzollern dynasty, root and branch. Even if they did not, the millions of soldiers who have offered their lives as a supreme sacrifice, not merely to readjust boundaries but to punish wrong, will see to it that their statesmen shall not permit this robber dynasty any longer to curse mankind. The demands of retributive justice, however, go much farther than the mere destruction of a reigning dynasty. Too much importance is given to a form of government. A German Republic under a Hindenburg or a von Tirpitz might be a small improvement so far as the future peace of the world is concerned. The Higher Law demands the destruction of the Prussian Empire. To permit that predatory government to continue would be to imperil the peace of the world afresh, for who can predict what alliances that empire, whether it call itself a monarchy or a republic, by its iniquitous methods of intrigue, bribery, and bullying, may not bring about in future years. "Now is the accepted time, this, the day of salvation." To destroy the Prussian Empire would be a dénouement of the world tragedy which would satisfy the first demand of justice. It would be an expiation worthy of Æschylus or Shakespeare. The judges in the coming Grand Assize of the nations can with profit follow the experience of our courts of criminal justice. When a burglar attempts to rob a house, the officer of the law does not in the death grapple discuss the ethics of property rights, nor does the judge simply hand him his kit of burglar tools and permit him to go "unwhipped of justice." The law first arrests him; it then destroys his kit of burglar tools, and restores to the owner the property that the burglar has stolen. It then compels the thief to repair any damage that he has wrought. Does it stop there? Prevention and restitution are not equivalent to retribution. For the safety of society and as an impressive example, the law convicts the burglar of the crime and then punishes him. The analogy is a true one. We are now in the act of preventing the greatest burglar of modern history from his wanton attack upon the rights of others. We must destroy his kit of burglar tools, the Prussian military machine, and then compel him to make restitution of his stolen property. The process should begin from the beginning. Prussia should cede back Silesia to Austria, Prussian Poland to the new Polish nation to be reborn of this travail, SchleswigHolstein to Denmark, Alsace-Lorraine to France, and the stolen Russian provinces to Russia. To return these without pecuniary reparation would be a lame and impotent conclusion and, therefore, money indemnities must be exacted that will, so far as material considerations can, restore the ravaged territories to their original condition. Restitution, however, is not retribution. The only retributive punishment that is adequate to the crime is the destruction of the Prussian Empire. I say the "Prussian Empire," not the German nation. The two are not in all respects identical. While we once overestimated the distinction, we now gravely underestimate it. The German is an ancient people, while the Prussian Empire is a parvenu among nations, which began its career in the crime of 1871 and which should end it in its crime of 1914. I like the recent suggestion of the editor of the Matin that the Prussian Empire shall end, where it began, in the great gallery of Versailles. How can this be accomplished? To this I reply that it will be either easy or altogether impossible. If the Prussian Empire prevails in this war, the whole discussion becomes academic; but if the Allies prevail, it will not be an inconclusive victory. Unless the Allies are misled by a sickly sentimentalism and a false pacifism, they will not "negotiate" with the Prussian Empire in the sense of a parley, but will dictate terms of peace, which need only be limited by wisdom, justice, and magnanimity. Apart from this power to dictate terms, two considerations will make the dismemberment of the Prussian Empire an easier task than many of our statesmen seem to imagine. The first is that industrial Germany would perish without the raw materials which only the countries of the Allies can supply. This I will discuss in a separate chapter. A peaceful economic alliance against Germany, as long as the present Prussian Empire continues as a political entity, with the promise of preferential terms to the German states other than Prussia, if they will form a separate government, would probably cause the swift disintegration of that empire after its defeat on the field of battle. It should not be forgotten that the Imperial Government is the creation of yesterday, and that it is almost as ramshackle an empire as that of Austria. It was welded together by Bismarck by the sword, and by material success. When that sword is broken and that material success vanishes, the empire will probably crack at its very foundations. This is true, because there are fundamental, political, social, and ethnological differences between Prussia, a mixed nation, and the rest of the German states which are by comparison pure Teutons. The incompatibility is not a thing of today or yesterday, but of ages past, and it was not mere accident that the states of the empire never united in their present form of complete subjection to Prussia until Bismarck forged the chains in the hectic days of 1871. A half a century ago, Bavaria, Würtemberg, Saxony, Darmstadt, Hesse, and Hanover all fought with Austria against Prussia, and their subjection was accomplished only by force. A nation is something more than a political state. It is an historic entity. Prussia has contributed little or nothing to the German people, except its military martinets and subservient statesmen. Lessing, Fichte, and Wagner were Saxons; Holbein and Dürer were Bavarians; Goethe was from Frankfort; Wieland, Schiller, Hegel |