And then after the War an historical enemy of America's does precisely the same thing. In the story of Amritsar and the Irish reprisals it is the Indian and Sinn Fein version only which is told; just as during the War we got nothing but the anti-German version of the burning of Louvain, or reprisals upon civilians. Why should we expect that the result should be greatly different upon American opinion? Four hundred unarmed and hopeless people, women and children as well as men, are mown down by machine-guns. Or, in the Irish reprisals, a farmer is shot in the presence of his wife and children. The Government defends the soldiers. 'Britain' has done this thing: forty-five millions of people, of infinitely varying degrees of responsibility, many opposing it, many ignorant of it, almost all entirely helpless. To represent them as inhuman monsters because of these atrocities is an infinitely mischievous falsehood. But it is made possible by a theory, which in the case of Germany we maintained for years as essentially true. And now it is doing as between Britain and America what a similar falsehood did as between Germany and England, and will go on doing so long as Nationalism includes conceptions of collective responsibility which fly in the face of common sense and truth. If the resultant hostilities can operate as between two national groups like the British and the American, what groups can be free of them? It is a little difficult now, two years after the end of the War, with the world in its present turmoil, to realise that we really did expect the defeat of Germany to inaugurate an era of peace and security, of reduction of armaments, the virtual end of war; and believed that it was German militarism, 'that trampling, drilling foolery in the heart of Europe, that has arrested civilisation and darkened the hopes of mankind for forty years,'[43] as Mr Wells wrote in _The War that will End War_, which accounted for nearly all the other militarisms, and that after its destruction we could anticipate 'the end of the armament phase of European history.' For, explained Mr Wells, 'France, Italy, England, and all the smaller Powers of Europe are now pacific countries; Russia, after this huge War, will be too exhausted for further adventure.'[44] 'When will peace come?' asked Professor Headlam, and answered that 'It will come when Germany has learnt the lesson of the War, when it has learnt, as every other nation has had to learn, that the voice of Europe cannot be defied with impunity.... Men talk about the terms of peace. They matter little. With a Germany victorious no terms could secure the future of Europe, with a Germany defeated, no artificial securities will be wanted, for there will be a stronger security in the consciousness of defeat.'[45]