All the schemes hitherto discussed, whether employed singly or in combination, are intended, first and last, to assist in playing the armistice trick on the Allies. This is based upon an astute calculation, still founded on the weariness of the combatants, which is so easily understood after a war as exhausting as that now in progress. At Berlin they reason thus—and the reasoning is not without force: ‘If an armistice is agreed upon, the Allied troops will say, “They’re talking, so peace is coming, and, before long, demobilization.” Under these conditions our adversaries will undergo a relaxation of their moral fibre.’ The Germans would ask nothing more. They would enter upon peace negotiations with the following astute idea. If, hypothetically, the Allies should make the enormous blunder of discussing terms of peace on bases so craftily devised, Germany, being still intrenched behind her fronts which had been made almost impregnable, would end by saying, ‘I am not in accord with you. After all is said, you cannot demand that I evacuate territory from which you are powerless to expel me. If you are not satisfied, go on with the war.’ Inasmuch as, during the negotiations, everything essential would have been done by German agents to accentuate the moral relaxation of the country which was most exhausted by the conflict, as they succeeded in doing in Russia in the first months of the Revolution, the immense military machine of the Entente could not again be set in motion in all its parts. The result would be the breaking asunder of the anti-German coalition, and, finally, the conclusion of peace substantially on the basis of existing conquests. Thus Berlin’s object would be attained. 6. _The ‘status quo ante’ trick_ The last of the German schemes, and the most dangerous of all, is that concealed under the formula, ‘No annexations or indemnities’—a formidable trap, which, as I have pointed out in earlier chapters, has for its object to confirm Germany in the possession of the gigantic advantages which she has derived from the war, and which would assure her the domination of the world, leaving the Allies with their huge war-losses, whose inevitable economic after-effects would suffice to reduce them to a state of absolute servitude with respect to Berlin. FOOTNOTES: [1] See _Atlantic Monthly_, June, 1917, p. 721. CHAPTER VII THE BEST WAY TO CRUSH PAN-GERMANY I THE UNITED STATES AND THE VASSALS OF BERLIN