If Germany were what is called “crushed”—a queer notion in connection with sixty-five millions of people—she would smoulder with such a fire of vengeance that a victorious British nation, slumbering in dreams of security, waxing fat and swollen-headed, would in a few years time be in as great danger as ever. If Germany be merely shorn of her pretensions and forced back within her former boundaries, then, unless good fortune bring her a social revolution and the comparative blessings of Democracy, Germany may be much the same as she has been, a soldier-ridden State, quickly or slowly gathering force, to reforge the iron machinery of the Prussian soul, and lead the armoured dance again. Stung to the quick by memory of mistake, knowing that she misjudged our nature and our power, she will not make mistake a second time. However ardently the successful may desire to forget—it takes two to bury the hatchet. Let no one think that Germany will forget. Should we, if we were beaten, or even badly thwarted? The writer is as great a lover of Peace as any who will resent his suggestion that enmity will not readily be changed. But it is well to remember that the menace from without is only increased by forgetting that human nature is fundamentally the same all the world over; and still more increased by not remembering that what we dream and desire is not as a rule what we can obtain. Granted, that all must hope and strive for the constitution of a League for Peace, and aim at making its conditions permanent, it will still be folly to blink the contingency of further war for years to come. The validity of such a League will hang on the first years. Keep it intact, enforce respect for its decisions, _get men’s minds used to it_, and after a short span nothing is more unlikely than that they will forego its blessings. But militarism will automatically and proportionately decrease only as men gain confidence in the League’s authority, recognizing at last that an impartial justice may apply to nations every bit as well as to individuals, when there is the force of general consent behind it. Given a generation of its rule, and the nations will no longer carry daggers to stab each other in the back, or swords to avenge their “honour.” There is no need for premature disarmament. Recognition of the menace from without will not harm a League for Peace during its first years, so long as we shy at all spirit of aggression, and are loyal to its first principle of “All for one, and One for all.”