The boundaries of the “German feeling” group in Europe are very roughly suggested by the thick black line. Within that curiously twisted line nearly all speech and all feeling is German.] In the first place Germany would keep all that she has, indifferent to national anomalies or the unquiet of subject and oppressed peoples. She would keep Alsace-Lorraine; she would keep in subjection the Poles who are already in subjection to her; she would leave the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy under the Hapsburgs with all its present possessions, whether those possessions grossly interfered with national realities or no. Would she annex territory, in spite of the first of the two postulates which I have already mentioned? The German constitutional system is of its nature federal. There is room in it for many kinds of states, each possessed of a very great measure of independence, and if the inclusion within one commercial system and one military system also, however loose that inclusion, be called annexation, then we may say that Germany would annex in some degree. She would wish to control directly the Mouth of the Scheldt and probably the Teutonic-speaking part of Belgium, that is, the north of that country. She would certainly desire to administrate the Ardennes, which would be her frontier against France, and she would quite certainly take over Luxembourg. As to Holland, her plan would probably be different there from that pursued in any other case. She would leave it as independent in its own eyes as it was before; she might insist upon an alliance with the Dutch army, she would certainly insist upon commercial terms, and probably rights of using certain ports in certain cases for war. But nothing but inexcusable folly would tempt her to go further. The position of Holland after a German settlement might not uncertainly be compared to the position of Hamburg in the old days, on a larger scale, a free State just as Hamburg was a free city. This easy and, as it were, mutually arranged compromise with Holland, coupled with dominion over the Scheldt and Antwerp, would give the German peoples what they most desire, the whole littoral of the North Sea. Further, possessing Antwerp, as they would certainly possess it, they would have a commercial lever for keeping Holland in order. They could direct all their trade at will towards Antwerp to the starvation of Rotterdam. The Scandinavian countries they would regard as naturally German in feeling, and as falling in a vague and general way into their orbit. Possessing the Kiel Canal, they would not strictly need the Sound. But they would so dominate Denmark that they could make what commercial or military terms they chose with regard to the passages of the Baltic; and you would have German firms, German methods, and to some extent the German language holding “civil garrisons” throughout the useful part of Sweden and Norway.