Only a complete victory can save the Allied countries from financial ruin, because, no matter what some people say, Germany will be able to pay the cost of the struggle she has initiated. As she is responsible for the war, Germany already owes to the united Allies a colossal sum which can be estimated roundly at between 250 and 300 milliards of francs. But if the credit of the German Empire is doomed to disappear on the day of her defeat, the material riches of Germany, which are very considerable, will continue. They represent much more than 300 milliards of francs. Of course Germany will only be able to pay her fabulous debt very gradually. But when means for collecting the German revenues shall have been systematically and leisurely studied by the conquering Allies, when these collections of revenue shall have become assured, of course not by written German promises, worthless scraps of paper, but by real guarantees in harmony with those precedents of history, which the government of Berlin strongly contributed to establish in 1870, Germany will be perfectly able to hand to each of the great conquering Allies about two milliards of francs a year. This annuity, thanks to modern financial combinations, will be sufficient to allow each Allied state to raise annual loans at relatively low rates and therefore easily procurable; and these will permit each State to spare its citizens the burden of taxes which would be not only crushing but fatal, and which would be inevitable if the country had to relinquish the hope of being recouped for its war expenses by Germany. Now, a truly complete victory like this, which is indispensable from so many points of view to the Allies, is perfectly possible in spite of the faults committed by the Allies, which alone have delayed it. A line of argument will set this possibility in a proper light. Harden himself has been constrained, as we have already seen, to face the hypothesis of a cession of Alsace-Lorraine to France. It is obvious that when they have come to that pitch at Berlin, it will mean that Germany at bay, on the brink of absolute disaster, will try to negotiate with the Allies in order to save her plan of domination “from Hamburg to the Persian Gulf.” This would enable her, after a short respite, to recover Alsace-Lorraine from France, as Harden also indicates. Therefore, the effort needed at the present moment, if the Allies wish to secure a complete instead of a doubtful victory, which in reality would mean for them a catastrophe, would be comparatively slight. That effort would probably only represent the hundredth part of all those already made by the Allies. We should be mad or criminal not to make it, because it is that last effort which will put an end to the horrible nightmare conjured up all over the world by Prussian militarism. * * * * *