in the future that we opponents of the dominant system must continue to raise our voice again and again in warning and in threats, and must exclaim to the rulers of Germany: "Your ideas regarding the future configuration of Europe mean nothing more than new tension, new armaments, new explosions. Incorrigible plungers into debt that you are, do you want to burden your enormous debit account from the past with continual new items recorded against you for the future?"

How does the most gifted German statesman since Bismarck conceive of the future of Germany and of Europe after this war? Let him speak for himself:

It goes without saying that the main object of the war must be to obtain for Germany, not only adequate compensation, but also guarantees which will prevent any future war under the same, or similar, unfavourable conditions.

Germany will in future require protection against hostility and desires for revenge, both old and new, in the West, the East and beyond the Channel; such protection can only be found in the increase of her own power. Our enemies will also strengthen their armaments on land and sea. We must see to it that our frontiers and shores are strengthened and rendered less easy of attack than at the beginning of this war; not in furtherance of that desire for world dominion with which we are falsely credited, but for the maintenance of our present position. The outcome of the war must be a positive, not a negative one. To prevent our annihilation, loss of territory or dismemberment, to ensure that we be not bled to the last farthing, that is not the point; it is a question of definite gain in the form of real security and guarantees, as an indemnity for hitherto unheard-of labours and suffering, and also as a pledge for the future. In view of the ill-feeling against us which this war is bound to bring in its train, the mere restoration of the status quo ante bellum would mean for Germany not gain, but loss. Only if our power, political, economic and military, emerges from this war so strengthened that it considerably outweighs the feelings of enmity that have been aroused shall we be able to assert with a clear conscience that our position in the world had been bettered by the war.1

There again we have from an authoritative source the German war-aims naked and undisguised: increased protection of Germany against future attacks, sufficient compensation for the past, real securities and guarantees for the future, the strengthening of Germany's position from a political, economic and military point of view, the refusal of the status quo ante bellum. Even Prince Bülow has thus learned nothing, and forgotten nothing, as a result of the experiences of this war. So much is this the case that he further cites the extension of Prussia's power after 1866 and of Germany's after 1870 as encouraging examples for a further extension of power after this war. That the 1871 peace of violence is one of the weightiest among the more remote causes of this war is a truth which has not yet dawned on the most astute of living German statesmen. That a peace of violence dictated by a conqueror, which can purchase an extension of the power of one only at the price of a diminution of the power of the other, can never create a really enduring state of peace is a historical and philosophical fact which also has not yet become familiar to the intellect of a Bülow, who in other respects is by no means afflicted with narrowness of vision. That it is only by a radical change of system, only by the abolition of the former international anarchy, only by an organisation of peace on a basis of law that an enduring guarantee of peace is possible in Europe this is a fact which has long been recognised by the statesmen of the Entente and of America, but to a Bülow such pacifist ideas still appear to be so Utopian that he does not even consider them worthy of mention. The former Chancellor still appears in the same intellectual equipment which distinguished him when, as leader of German policy, he inexorably opposed, during the second Hague Conference, all ideas of progress in international law. The reader will recall his unsympathetic attitude towards the most important problems of the Hague Conference of 1907, towards the problem of arbitration, the limitation of armaments, etc. Prince Bülow to-day is exactly the same man as he then was -a worthy successor of his predecessors, a worthy predecessor of his successors.

There are only two paths to the future configuration of Europe: the path of power or the path of right. There is no third way. When a man like Prince Bülow has not yet gained any realisation of the fact that the principle of power has for ever collapsed in the present war, that only a system of law can save Europe from the whirlpool, it is possible to imagine the state of mind which prevails in the lower regions of Prussian-German bureaucracy and of the world of culture. The most recent utterances of Prince Bülow cast an appalling light on Germany's intelligence; they cannot but fill with the deepest grief every friend of Germany, of Europe, and of humanity. On this basis, as outlined by Prince Bülow, a conclusion of peace would be possible, only if Germany and her allies emerged from the war as undisputed conquerors. Since this possibility is excluded, with such war-aims as these the war will necessarily be indefinitely prolonged. Even, however, if the impossible were possible, even if it were conceivable that Germany could dictate the conditions of peace, Bülow's peace would again be nothing more than the peace which we had before 1914: a latent state of war, a masked

war.

When one reads Prince Bülow, one almost begins to forgive Herr von Bethmann. Poor Germany, where the first in office are at the same time the last in progressive thought! Poor Europe, where such retrograde minds exercise decisive influence on the destinies of nations.

B

COMMENTS ON THE CHANCELLOR'S SPEECH OF APRIL 5TH, 19161

Lasciate ogni speranza! All hope abandon ye who await with ardent expectancy a peace, a peace at an early date, an enduring peace, a European peace.

1

This hitherto unpublished essay was written in April, 1916, and amplified by a number of additions relating to later events.

The speech delivered by the Chancellor on April 5th brings to nought all your hopes.

Now the cat is out of the bag, now the mask has fallen, now it is possible to see plainly and undisguisedly the peace for which Germany is striving, but which in all the earlier speeches from the Government Bench had still been veiled from a sense of shame.

Even before now there has been advanced as the German war-aim the creation of the "political, military and economic guarantees which will protect Germany from a future attack." In his speech in the December sitting of the Reichstag (1915) Herr von Bethmann had already become more distinct. Even then he had already spoken of "guarantees" in Belgium, which would prevent this land from being again misused by Germany's enemies as a "deploying-ground" against Germany. Even then he had represented the "doors of invasion in the East and the West” as a danger for Germany which must be removed for the future. Even then he had spoken in a veiled, although in a sufficiently transparent, manner of the Russian fortifications and railways on the eastern frontier of Germany. But all the same these postulates of a German peace of violence were still advanced in a modestly shamefaced manner, with reservations attached, so that they offered to the spokesmen of the Social Democratic majority the possibility of an intentional misunderstanding, and consequently of a concurrence expressive of their confidence.

To-day every shame-concealing rag has fallen. Herr von Bethmann has become plain, only all too plain. The leaders of the civil parties have even surpassed him in plainness of language, and if, after the speeches of the Chancellor and that of Dr. Spahn, the speaker for the Social Democratic majority is to-day still confident "that we have no thought of violating other nations," then this member of the party develops such a degree of naïveté or such intentional dullness of hearing that one should feel constrained to deny his competence to act as a representative of the people on the grounds of his intellectual or physical insufficiency.

WAR OF DEFENCE, NOT PREVentive War

The Chancellor's speech of April 5th is in every respect one of the most tragic documents of the time. It proves in the first place that the German Government, and the civil parties, including the majority of the Social Democrats, along with it, adhere without remission to the lie that Germany did not want this war, that it was attacked by its enemies and that it is waging a war of defence. Since the beginning of the war this lie has been repeated so many hundreds of thousands of times that, according to a familiar psychological process, its inventors themselves have perhaps already begun to believe it. This would be the only mitigating circumstance which could be allowed in favour of the responsible authors of this German war of aggression.

The refutation of the lie of defence is to be found in my books. In view of the Chancellor's speech of April 5th and all the earlier speeches from the same quarter, there is no occasion to discuss the question of the preventive war. Once again Herr von Bethmann refrained from implying in anything that he said that the Entente Powers, while not wanting this war, intended to begin at a later date against Germany and Austria an aggressive war which it was necessary to anticipate by the provocation of the present war. Not a word, not a hint in this sense, is to be found in any of the speeches so far delivered by the Chancellor, in any official or semi-official statement of the German Government. Herr von Bethmann once more repeats the familiar litany that the three enemy Powers were knit together against us by lust of conquest, desire for revenge and jealousy, that they had endeavoured "to turn back the wheel of history into times for ever gone," that they had wanted war in order to annihilate and crush us, and that we had taken the field merely to defend our Fatherland and to keep the enemy far from our frontiers:

It was to preserve the unity and freedom of Germany that we went into battle, the whole nation united to a man. It is this united and free Germany that our enemies wish to destroy. It was in our defence that we took the field, but that which was