The dream had its heart at Berlin. It could have had its heart nowhere else. It rejected entirely the idea of the solidarity of race. The choice of peoples played no part at all in the contemplated binding together of the racial and political units, which could keep together only by force. And they actually carried the greater part of that amazing plan into execution. Look how things stand. Austria, at their mercy, has acted, not upon its own initiative or upon the choice of its own people, but at Berlin's dictation ever since the War began. Its people now desire peace, but they cannot have it until leave is granted from Berlin. The so-called Central Powers are, in fact, but a single Power. Serbia is at its mercy should its hand be but for a moment freed; Bulgaria consented to its will; Rumania is overrun by the Turkish armies, which the Germans trained into serving Germany, and the guns of the German warships lying in the harbor at Constantinople remind the Turkish statesmen every day that they have no choice but to take their orders from Berlin. From Hamburg to the Persian Gulf the net is spread. Is it not easy to understand the eagerness for peace that has been manifested by Berlin ever since the snare was set and sprung? "Peace, peace, peace" has been the talk of her Foreign Office for a year or more, not peace upon her own initiative, but upon the initiative of the nations over which she now deems herself to hold the advantage. A little of the talk has been public, but most of it has been private, through all sorts of channels. It has come to me in all sorts of guises, but never with the terms disclosed which the German Government would be willing to accept. That Government has other valuable pawns in its hands besides those I have mentioned. It still holds a valuable part of France, though with a slowly relaxing grasp, and practically the whole of Belgium. Its armies press close on Russia and overrun Poland. It cannot go farther--it dare not go back. It wishes to close its bargain before it is too late and it has little left to offer for the pound of flesh it will demand. The military masters under whom Germany is bleeding see very clearly to what point fate has brought them: if they fall back or are forced back an inch, their power abroad and at home will fall to pieces. It is their power at home of which they are thinking now more than of their power abroad. It is that power which is trembling under their very feet.