We have dealt elsewhere with the problem of punishment, but
may note here another matter of some importance. We gather from the general strain of Mr. Ponsonby's article that he would answer our arguments by saying that it is not fair to attribute any responsibility for the acts of their Government to the people of Germany. No doubt this is inconsistent with hie statement that " you cannot by punishment inflicted upon all sections of the people convince a nation that believes in the justice of its cause that its belief is wrong," but making allowance for trifles like these, we have a word to say as to this pica that we have no right to blame the German people but only their Govern- ment. Our answer is that a people which boasts itself, and treth- fully, to be the best educated in the world and the most advanced in arts and science had no business to tolerate such a Government as that which has laid it low. Before undertaking predatory conquests abroad it should have won liberty at home. Liberty is the place in the sun which Germany should have won for herself before she began to lay plans for a P.m-Germanic Empire, for the hegemony of a Mittel-Europe Empire, for occupying Baghdad or seizing Egypt, or for using Antwerp and Calais to place the freedom of the seas under the beneficent Prussian trident.
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