That was written, remember, not during the war, nor on the eve of it, but in 1911. We have seen since then how the Pan-Germanist principle that “after all, every war can be avoided, but it is also easy to find motives, if one wants to” was carried out. What we will not see and will not tolerate is the establishment of Greater Germany. For it means amongst other things, according to the prophet Tannenberg, not only that Ireland will become independent of England, and that Austria-Hungary will be incorporated in the German Empire, but that the neutral states of Holland, Luxembourg, Switzerland, and Belgium, neutral no longer, will disappear completely from the map of Europe and lose their identity and their freedom in the maw of the same all-embracing and all-devouring organization. What need have we of further witness? Out of their own mouths the Germans are condemned, for the thousandth time. The war was deliberately provoked, though “like any war,” it might have been avoided. The excuse for it, invented long beforehand, that it was to put an end to the alleged oppression of Germans in Russia, Austria, England, America, and all other countries, was as false as the pretence that any such oppression existed. The real object, the aggrandizement of Germany, not only by the oppression but by the suppression of all the weaker Latin and German races of Europe, was exhibited naked and unashamed, for all the world to see, long before the would-be oppressor drew the sword. It remains to-day more than ever the real object of the war, now that it is unsheathed. No possible special pleading can maintain, much less prove, that the suppression of Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, and Switzerland (to say nothing of the partial suppression of France, England, Russia, Italy, and Servia), is right. The mere suggestion of such an idea is an abominable wrong, which God will not defend, and because of it Great Britain will not tolerate, in any shape or form, the establishment of a Greater Germany. We are going to win this war. But let every man of the Allies and above all every Englishman, reflect on this undoubted fact. Because it is a war between right and wrong, between the powers of light and the powers of darkness, we shall not win it until we have learnt its great lesson, until we know as a nation—and we do not know it yet—that its particular message to our own country is the duty of self-sacrifice. * * * * * * It is the first day of the New Year. Last night the Old Year, the saddest and most terrible that the world has ever seen, came to its appointed end.