That depends on the result. If we succeed, and if, as the result of our victory, Europe is rearranged, as far as possible, with regard to the principle of nationality, and in accordance with the wishes of the people who dwell in the various disputed areas, we may look forward with hope to a great relaxation and easement. But if Germany wins it will not be the victory of the quiet, sober, commercial elements in Germany, nor of the common people of Germany with all their virtues, but the victory of the blood and iron military school, whose doctrines and principles will then have received a supreme and terrible vindication. "I cannot understand," he continued, "why Germany has not been contented with her wonderful progress since the Battle of Waterloo. For the last half century she has been the centre of Europe; courted by many; feared by many; treated with deference by all. No country has had such a reign of prosperity and splendour, yet all the time she has been discontented; solicitous of admiration; careless of International Law; worshipping force and giving us all to understand that her triumphs in the past and her power in the present were little compared to what she sought in the future. "And now the great collision has come, and it is well that the democratic nations of the world--the nations, I mean, where the peoples own the Government, and not the Government the people--should realise what is at stake. The French, English, and American systems of government by popular election and parliamentary debate with the kind of civilisation which flows from such institutions are brought into direct conflict with the highly efficient Imperialist bureaucracy and military organisation of Prussia. That is the issue. No partisanship is required to make it plain. No sophistry can obscure it." I asked whether the democracy of the United States, apart from the moral issues involved, had any direct interests in the result of the war. "You are the judges of that," replied the First Lord. "You do not require me to talk to you of your interests. If England were to be reduced in this war, or another which would be sure to follow from it if this war were inconclusive, to the position of a small country like Holland, then, however far across the salt water your country may lie, the burden which we are bearing now would fall on to your shoulders. "I do not mean by that that Germany would attack you, or that if you were attacked you would need to fear the result so far as the United States was concerned. The Monroe Doctrine, however, carries you very far in South as well as North America; and is it likely that victorious German militarism, which would then have shattered France irretrievably, have conquered Belgium, and have broken for ever the power of England, would allow itself to be permanently cut off from all hopes of that oversea expansion and development with which South America alone can supply it?