In none of the addresses or communications of any of these spokesmen is there any real admission of defeat, any intimation of humility, any indication of having been lessoned, nor, indeed, of anything that can be interpreted as recognition of the fact that Germany has been the victim of _Grossenwahn_, megalomania, which prompted and compelled her to a line of conduct which conditioned her destruction. On the contrary, everything that has been said has a note of determination to rehabilitate herself in order that she may take the leading position, morally, intellectually, commercially, in the world. At the very moment when admission that she had lost the war was forced from her, and while she was prostrate on the field of battle and in a state of collapse in every acre of her territory, instead of silence and of resignation, instead of an indication of that humility which tauts the heart-strings of the conqueror, there was clamor of exultation setting forth the virtues of the people and their ineradicable potentialities. Having been denied victory on the field of battle, if that _Gott_ who was their _Feste Burg_ does not desert them, they will now win a greater victory--they will show the world that they can conquer themselves and convert defeat into victory. They are without shame and without modesty. They ask for succor from the nation which less than eighteen months ago was a negligible quantity and which four years ago was made up of drivelling idiots and men mad with lust for wealth. "You will not let countless thousands of women and children die of starvation." No, we shall not let them starve, but we shall have adequate care that never again will it be within your power to thrust the mailed fist of one extremity upon the honest, God-fearing people of the world while with the other you snatch the food from the mouths of those unable, because of age or infirmity, to provide for themselves. One does not fail to detect the ring of exultation with which they say that they will win the greatest of all victories--that of showing that, though defeated in arms, they can be masters of themselves. They have no recognition whatsoever that the destruction of mediæval imperialism and the unfurling of the flag of liberty have been due to valor and sacrifice of the peoples of the whole world, who have accomplished it without other motive than to make the world a fit place in which an honest man can live. In short, they are endeavoring to make it seem that their defeat in the material control of the world by the German sword is to be an opportunity for a great German triumph.