"We are all going back to preventatives," said another. "After all it is the foundation of Mosaic law--the prevention of evil. America has adopted the idea. Prohibition is not freedom. It is taking the bottle away and not giving you a chance. It is the same with other human sins. The best way to reduce the numbers of murders is to reduce the number of weapons and exact a heavy gun licence. The best way to stop robbery is to use more steel locks. Make it difficult to commit crime and then crime won't be committed. But beware of Freedom." The conversation was side-tracked on to the subject of the "dryness of America." But it provided an insight into the German point of view. Coming into line with the rest of Europe Germany accepted the idea of Freedom in November, 1918. She watched how it worked and then very quickly turned her back on it. In truth, Freedom is not congenial to Germans. Had Germany won she hoped to impose her type of civilization everywhere, and she saw little harm in the fact of imposition. Inferior nations ought to be raised to Germany's cultural level by force, and they ought to be prevented from running amuck internationally, also by force. The German mind viewed complacently the bondage of the small nations in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It did not think that Czechs or Poles lost anything by being governed from Vienna. Its only reservation was that it might be still better for them if they were governed from Berlin. Berlin still believes that Alsatians and Danes and Poles and Russians and Czechs are better in health under German discipline. Europe organized militarily was the German conception of the future--that some one should order and some one should obey everywhere. Great Britain caught the idea through Carlyle, though it was more congenial to the Germanic type of Southern Scot than to English or Irish. We talked of "captains of industry," and the "aristocracy of talent," and "benevolent autocracy," though we could not realize them. But to modern Germany this idea was society's cement. It was preached from the Lutheran pulpit, it was taught by sergeants in the Army, it was unfolded and beflagged by politicians on election day. There were rebels against it but no national movement opposed it. It was even rooted in the home where husband ruled wife, and father ruled children with complete authority, and a man could point to his _frau_ or his _kind_ with his index finger, and say "To-morrow you will do that. Now you shall do this!"