THE LONG ROAD TO PEACE.
TAST week we discussed the minimum terms of peace which .4 it will be possible for the Allies to offer Germany, terms of peace which, however, must be to some extent governed by the rule in the case of Tarquin versus the Sibyl. The terms are bound to become harder the longer hostilities are protracted. Those terms the Germans, or at any rate the ruling caste, will naturally and inevitably consider so hard that they will fight as long as the peoples subject to them will allow. And no wonder. The minimum terms of the Allies cannot possibly attract them. Any peace offer of the Allies must appear like an invitation to commit suicide. The dumb populations of Germany and Austria, as Carlyle would have called them, may be deeply moved by the hope of a cessation of hostilities, by the removal of the dreadful necessity of sending their men to die in the trenches, by the intense desire to have food enough not merely to sustain life but to satisfy appetite, and so make life bearable on the physical side. There is a vision of the full larder once more, in the minimum terms of the Allies, to attract the German masses. And they also will be haunted by the feeling that if the terms are not accepted now, worse terms will be offered to them later—i.e., at a time when rejection will be impossible.
The German Emperor, the heads of the German Army, the German military caste generally, and the chiefs of the bureaucratic caste can entertain no such feelings. Peace terms such as we sketched, the only terms on which the Allies can contemplate peace, would mean for them utter ruin. We must, therefore, face the fact, however disagreeable, that the absolute obligation which compels us to put minimum terms at least as high as we put them last Saturday raises huge obstacles to a quick peace. We cannot have it both ways. If we were to make a rapid peace, we should forfeit Security—the thing for which we are fighting. We should lay foundations for another bloody war, we should be digging our own graves. If, on the other hand, we insist, as we must, on making a secure peace, we have nothing to offer the ruling caste in Germany, and must be prepared possibly for another year of war, probably for at least another six months of intensive fighting, with all that this means. Happily our people, the French people, the Russian people, and the Italian people know this. They are prepared to endure the ills which they cannot cure, and which are inherent in the situa- tion. Necessity has been called the tyrant's plea, but in the case of the Allies it has become the plea of liberty, truth, and humanity. There is a special and peculiar circumstance which is very likely to protract the present war by weeks, and even by months. That is the fact which is known to every German who knows anything—namely, that Frederick the Great, though apparently hopelessly beaten, refused to yield or to accept the terms of peace offered him by his enemies, since those terms meant for him and his system total ruin. His armies were shrinking, his people starving. The lands in many places lay waste, since there was none to till them. The enemy had twice entered his capital ; the civil administra- tion had broken down ; there was no one to collect the taxes, to try cases in the Courts, or even to keep order. Prussia seemed beaten to the ground. Yet Frederick fought on, and finally tired out his assailants. They grew war-weary at the very moment when Prussia seemed, to use Bismarck's phrase, bled " white as veal," and so in the end the war was finished by a compromise which left the King of Prussia with Silesia, the province that he had seized like a thief in the night, still in his hands. It is true that Prussia was a thing of ruin, but the cynic tyrant could smile as he paced the long galleries of the New Palace at Potsdam, that glorious archi- tectural achievement of a blood-soaked epoch in which the rococo style flowered in a miracle of stateliness and grace. After all, he had beaten Austria. If he had lost half his popula- tion, he had nearly doubled his cultivable acreage. At this moment every German who in his heart of hearts is beginning to feel the dread of defeat remembers how Frederick won through when his plight seemed far worse, and ended up as ruler of the triumphant wolf State of the world. The King, infamous for stolen States and plundered provinces, had triumphantly disproved his own Anti-Machiavel. He had shown, or seemed to show, the whole world that dishonesty was the paying policy, that faithlessness to your word was good business, and that craft in a King was the best of sub- stitutes for conscience. Never had there appeared to be a more signal triumph of evil over good, and the world at large was conscienceless enough, callous enough, and indifferent enough to acquiesce in Frederick's claim to a victory for " the negation of God erected into a system." The Allied Powers are not going to follow the example of Maria Theresa and her supporters, for several good and sufficient reasons. In the first place, they are a great deal more frightened than was any Continental Power which took part in the Seven Years' War. By the time the war came to an end no Power any longer really dreaded Prussia. The Powers were in the position of a man who is dealing with a wounded but still formidable tiger who has retreated into a cave. The hunter calculates that in the case of a beast so badly injured it will be better policy to leave him maimed in his cave than to endure the very disagreeable risks of going in and giving him the coup de grdce. Again, the Powers thought, and events may be said to have proved that they were right, that they had so com- pletely sterilized Prussia that there was no danger of the war breaking out again. But no one can feel that in the present case. We know well that to discontinue the war on any terms except those we have sketched would merely mean giving the Germans the opportunity to prepare for yet stronger attacks on the freedom of mankind. Besides, we live in a democratic age, and democracies when once roused are far more resolute in policy and far hardier in war than autocratio or aristocratic Governments. It takes a democracy to deal the hammer-strokes required to fight a war to a finish. It may be that democracies are never vigilant in preparation, that they are indolent in peace, that they are supine in protecting their interests ; but when once they get under way in a national war they are not turned aside from their purpose by diplomatic niceties, or by far-fetched considerations that it may not be sound political strategy to push victory too far. Their minds once set, they endure to the end. But the peoples of Britain, France, and Italy are democracies, and so for war purposes are the people of Russia.
Though, for the reasons we have given, we must expect the rulers of Germany to fight till their very last ounce of strength is exhausted, to fight as those who have no alternative, they can only protract the war for a few months. They cannot prevent the inevitable end. And at least we shall have the satisfaction of finding that when the final catastrophe is reached the settlement will be easier, not harder. But before the catastrophe comes we must steel our hearts for the hardest fight of all. Macaulay, in describing the end of the Seven Years' War, speaks of " the desperate bounds of the hunted tiger " which occurred at the moment when " the circle of pursuers was fast closing round him." We are just beginning to see those desperate bounds, and we must be prepared to meet them. We must remember that in all probability the German Army and the German people will in the last month or two of the war develop a strength and an energy which will seem miraculous. But the exhibition of such demoniac power will be a sign not of renewed strength but of approaching dissolution. We shall suffer, and in all probability suffer very greatly, in this last struggle ; but we must and shall hold on, remembering that it is always the last pull on the rope which is the hardest, and that it must be endured even if it cuts the fingers to the bone. The energy of faith and goodwill must in the end beat the energy of despair. It is the Allies whose cause is good, and who are preparing, not for the renewal of a system which would make human life a hell, but for one which, whatever may be its faults—and of these there will no doubt be plenty—will give some place in the world to truth and justice, and above all to liberty.
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