It is essential that, before the terms of peace are discussed, a clear idea should be formed of the reasons which led the German Government to provoke this war. It is well that, if such a course be at all possible, those who are personally responsible for the numerous acts of barbarity committed by the Germans should receive adequate punishment. But attention to points of this sort, however rational and meritorious, should not in any degree be allowed to obscure the vital importance of the permanent political issues which call loudly for settlement. Otherwise, it is quite conceivable that a peace may be patched up, which may have some specious appearance of being favourable to the Allies, but which would at the same time virtually concede to the Germans all they require in order, after time had been allowed for recuperation, to renew, with increased hope of success, their attempts to shatter modern civilization and to secure the domination of the world. M. Chéradame explains—and I believe with perfect accuracy—the nature of the German objective. It is, in his opinion, to lay secure and stable foundations for the system known as Pan-Germanism. What is Pan-Germanism? It may be doubted whether all that is implied in that term is fully realized in this country. One interpretation may be given to the word, which is not merely innocuous, but which may even reasonably appeal to the sympathies of those who approve of the new map of Europe being constituted with a view to applying that nationalist principle, which finds almost universal favour in all democratic countries. It cannot be too distinctly understood that the political programme now advocated by Germany has no sort of affinity with a plan of this sort. The Germans contend not only that all those who are generally denominated Germans by the rest of the world should be united, but that all who are of what is termed “German origin” should be brought into the German fold. Moreover, they give to this latter phrase an expansion and a signification which is condemned and derided by all who have paid serious attention to ethnological studies. This, however, is far from stating the whole case. The object of the German Government is to effect the whole or partial Germanization of countries inhabited by races which cannot, by any conceivable ethnological process of reasoning, be held to be of German stock. In fact, M. Chéradame very correctly describes Pan-Germanism when he says that its object is to disregard all questions of racial and linguistic affinity and to absorb huge tracts of country the possession of which is considered useful to advance Hohenzollern interests. In other words, what they wish is to establish, under the name of Pan-Germanism, a world system whose leading and most immediate feature is the creation of an empire stretching from the Persian Gulf to the North Sea.