'But the purpose! That justifies it! What purpose? To obtain the signature to the Treaty of Peace. Many Englishmen--not Pacifists, not sentimentalists, not conscientious objectors, or other vermin of that kind, but Bishops, Judges, Members of the House of Lords, great public educators. Tory editors--have declared that this Treaty is a monstrous injustice. Some Englishmen at least think so. But if the Germans say so, that becomes a crime which we shall know how to punish. "The enemy have been reminded already" says the _Times_, proud organ of British respectability, of Conservatism, of distinguished editors and ennobled proprietors, "that the machinery of the blockade can again be put into force at a few hours' notice ... the intention of the Allies to take military action if necessary.... Rejection of the Peace terms now offered them, will assuredly lead to fresh chastisement." 'But will not Mr Lloyd George be able to bring back _signatures_? Will he not have made Peace--permanent Peace? Shall we not have destroyed this Prussian philosophy of frightfulness, force, and hate? Shall we not have proved to the world that a State without military power can trust to the good faith and humanity of its neighbours? Can we not, then, celebrate victory with light hearts, honour our dead and glorify our arms? Have we not served faithfully those ideals of right and justice, mercy and chivalry, for which a whole generation of youth went through hell and gave their lives?' CHAPTER VI THE ALTERNATIVE RISKS OF STATUS AND CONTRACT The facts of the present situation in Europe, so far sketched, reveal broadly this spectacle: everywhere the failure of national power to indispensable ends, sustenance, political security, nationality, right; everywhere a fierce struggle for national power. Germany, which successfully fed her expanding population by a system which did not rest upon national power, wrecked that system in order to attempt one which all experience showed could not succeed. The Allied world pilloried both the folly and the wickedness of such a statecraft; and at the peace proceeded to imitate it in every particular. The faith in the complete efficacy of preponderant power which the economic and other demands of the Treaty of Versailles and the policy towards Russia reveal, is already seen to be groundless (for the demands, in fact, are being abandoned). There is in that document an element of _naïveté_, and in the subsequent policy a cruelty which will be the amazement of history--if our race remains capable of history.