TOPICS OF THE DAY.
A MORAL TEST.
IT seems possible—some people may think it probable, while others may think it even certain—that the people of this country are shortly to be brought to a severe moral test. It may be that within a very few weeks they will have to take a decision which will prove whether they are men and women of principle or men and women guided by base expediency. A careful examination of the phase which the war has reached suggests that Germany is likely, or certain, as the case may be, to make us an offer which will be extremely attractive in form. The question for us to decide, if this should happen, will be whether the attractive form covers what will be in intention and substance a degrading and disastrous proposal.
In order to appreciate the probability of this coming to pass, it is necessary to look at the situation through German eyes. The Germans, as we all know, have Russia at their mercy ; their knees are upon her chest. If within the next few weeks Germany can establish herself firmly enough in Russia, she will justly feel that the whole Eastern world, stretching from the Baltic as far as India and the shores of the Pacific, is open to her operations. Hitherto through force of circumstances, if for no other reason, she has cultivated land routes rather than sea routes, and in the immediate prospect vast new land mutes, extending into the dim Eastern back of beyond," spread out before her gaze. The Baltic, as she hopes, will be a German sea. Sweden, it is true—not to mention others—has her place, her rights, and her privileges in that sea ; but Germany, in the frenzy of reckoning up her new gains, is not likely to be much troubled by the thought that Sweden may exchange the old animosity against Russia for a new animosity against Germany. Very likely Germany is quite content that Sweden should hate as long as she fears. In the South of Russia Germany beholds a wonderful granary, even though, as we believe, that granary is not at all well stocked at the moment. She sees her way open to the Black Sea, and beholds new routes stretching away on the other side into Asia. What Japan may think of all this prospect it is still impossible to say. It has been generally conjectured that Japan would not have remained unconcerned if Russia, while she was still under the Tsar, had withdrawn from the Alliance. It is safe, therefore, to assume that Japan cannot take a dispassionate view of the prospective stretching out of German power into the East. But this is a matter which need only be mentioned in passing. The real point to bear in mind is that if Germany is to make her control eastwards firm, harsh, and profitable in her accustomed triple manner, she will have taken on as much as she can possibly manage without looking westwards. She knows that the strength and moral of her armies are not what they were ; her economic exhaustion is great, even though it does not entirely prohibit extra-Oriental ambitions ; and she must be telling herself that it is definitely impossible for her to advance to Paris or take any coast towns in Northern France. When we talk of Germany as the greatest of military Powers, we too often forget that she is also a very great commercial Power. She is, in fact, predominantly a commercial Power, for she could not be a great military Power if she were not. The two conditions are interdependent. Now in these circumstances what is Germany likely to do I In order to make good her new possessions she will undoubtedly want to save as many of her economic resources as she can, and to save them as quickly as possible. Among her economic resources human beings have to be ranked very high, if not indeed in the first place. She will not want to throw away a single man as cannon-fodder whom she can save to reconstruct the new Empire of the German nation.
We hear much of a coming German offensive, and it is of course possible that the military leaders of Germany really believe that they can end the war this spring by depriving the British people of all hope of fighting till the American Army is ready. All we have to say to that is that our men, whose training and spirit were never higher than they are to-day, would like nothing better than that the Germans should try to break through. If the Germans try, a decision may well come in that way, but not in the sense that the German military experts imagine. The German Staff must have bitter memories of the prolonged assault of Verdun. If the German Army should undertake a new offensive com- parable with the Verdun assault, it would almost certainly leave it with more bitter memories still. On the whole, one is inclined to believe that the German Staff are thoroughly alive to these considerations, and that, provided Germany can firmly hold her Russian conquests, she will earnestly desire a speedy general peace. In what manner would the offer of a general peace be made ? The German rulers, on this occasion and for this purpose, would probably not be restrained from making the offer enticing by any fear of appearing to their own people to have failed or to be leading Germany on to humiliation. They would be able to point to the vast successes in the East to silence such criticism. We think it likely enough, then, that Germany before Jong will tell us that as a Christian nation, inspired by the highest ideals of humanity and by the desire to clasp once again in friendship the hands of other people (or in any other phrases in the same sense that the Kaiser may happen to invent), she is quite ready to evacuate Belgium and Serbia and Northern France. She may even promise to engage heartily in the work of restoring Belgium and Serbia—though no doubt she would try to introduce financial ambiguities which she would be able to interpret at home as proof that the Allies were really paying the bill for having forced Germany into her " heroic war of defence." It is even possible that Germany would think it worth while to discuss in an apparently friendly and yielding spirit the question of Alsace-Lorraine. That she has any real intention at present of yielding the rich mineral districts of the French lost provinces, since she regards these as essential to her military plans, we do not for a moment suppose. Nevertheless, it may be imagined that her desire for peace will be so strong that she will not think it advisable to put any unnecessary hindrances in her own way.
The question now arises what the answer of the Allies ought to be if Germany should make such an offer as this. It can hardly be doubted that one of the first impulses of a war-weary world, sickened with slaughter, would be to jump at a proposal that seemed to provide justice for Belgium and Serbia, and gave the Western people an opportunity of what might be represented as peace with honour. Many argu- ments might be summoned to reinforce this primary impulse, and if the circumstances should ever arise there can be no doubt that they will be summoned. It would be said, for instance, that Russia had chosen to commit suicide, and could not expect any protests on her behalf. What Russia has done in having sacrificed, in a madness of devotion to empty and futile phrases, the greatest of all causes for which human beings ever fought, will indeed live in the memory, and may seem to relieve people honourably of all responsibility. Again, it may be said that it would be definitely wrong to go on fighting to support the Bolshevik creed, which is after all a creed of anarchy, against the German capacity for creating order, however harsh that order may be. Already there are signs that German statesman are trying to convince the world that they are the apostles of discipline and of a quiet life as contrasted with the wild disorder and tumult of the Bolshevik regime. In our opinion, however, if the situation which we are imagining comes, it will be necessary to sweep aside all these arguments as false. If the war is a war of principles, it will remain every bit as much a war of principles after the Germans have made such an offer. We have talked for over three and a half years about destroying German militarism, and the hideous atmosphere of insincerity, wrang- ling, and rapacious dishonesty which militarism imposes upon the world. Are we to yield to that system because Russia has committed suicide ? Are we to tell ourselves that the German principle has become a whit less dangerous now than it was three and a half years ago ? Surely it will be obvious that if Germany gets peace when she wants it and as she wants it, militarism will be enthroned. Once more German rulers will be able to tell the German people that it has paid to make war. An endless vista of wars will open out because the sources of fresh inevitable wars will always be there. It may be said that, by adviking people in advance to reject what may be represented as a reasonable basis of peace, we are trying to lead them into a waste and barren place from which there is no visible means of escape. The answer to that may seem a rough-and-ready one—it has to be admitted that no perfectly plain pathway lies before the Allies—but it is nevertheless an answer that provides all the necessary guidance for the future. That answer is that Germany must not be allowed to break off the war while she believes or is able to say that it has paid her to make war. Tf such a thing should happen, the German principle would have triumphed over the principle of the Allies. If we declare that our principles have not become dimmer than they were at the beginning, and that our devotion to them is as deep as it was then, we may suffer adversity, but we cannot stiffer humiliation. Any failure on our part will be a failure of the civil population, not of the soldiers. The vicissitudes of this war are swift, and history has shown again and again that the tenacious nation was much nearer success towards the end of a war than it had ever supposed. In spite of the grandiosity of her conquests in Russia, Germany knows perfectly well that she has not found there all things necessary for her economic recuperation. She is • regarded as the enemy of the human race by nations all over the world. Our Allies, declared or implicit, are almost past numbering. The nations which loathe and despise, and mean to end, the German militarist system of life have the command of the sea, and above all they have right on their side. Yet it is upon this union of nations which know that their cause is true that Germany is ultimately dependent for articles without which she cannot continue her industries.
But quite apart from that, our military position is much better than some persons, in an excess of disgust at events in Russia, allow themselves to remember. Take as a single instance the extraordinary progress which is being made by the Allied airmen. It would not be wise to speculate too much upon what has been accomplished during the last three weeks, but if our successes continue in arithmetical progression, the time will be measurably near when Germany will be deprived of her eyes. If none of her aeroplanes can rise from the ground, her guns will have no targets to fire at. The German guns will loose off their ammunition into the void, while our own artillery will be firing with all its old precision and effect. This is only an example. Many other reasons for having a good heart might be quoted. The nation, in spite of all the silly talk about our war aims not having been stated, is more united now as to the minimum principles for which we have to fight than at any moment during the war. In spite, again, of most of the talk about revolution, the mind and spirit of the working men are absolutely sound. The shortage of food may become some- thing worse than an inconvenience—it may approach the border-lines of want. But are people so mean-spirited as not to endure for the noblest of popular causes what hundreds of hunger-strikers are willing to undergo for some small point of fanaticism or through some personal grievance of no general importance ? We cannot believe it. We feel certain that if the Germans offer an illusory peace, that offer will be recognized for what it is, and will be refused. In this matter we can count upon the great people of the United States, who are fighting for a principle, and absolutely for nothing else. Whatever suffering there may be, it cannot last indefinitely. Right will certainly triumph, and when that glorious day comes we shall recognize that what was grievous to endure is sweet to remember.
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