If politicians and statesmen turn a deaf ear to the cry of a world in distress and to a growing demand that the policies pursued should be reasonable and constructive, the voice of the people themselves swelling in volume bids fair to overwhelm all triflers with peace. For despite the bluster of the fire-eaters and a Press which encourages their empty violence, the world is sick of blood and strife. Germany has suffered such a defeat as history has never known. Sixty millions of people, however, virile, disciplined, hard-working, cannot be obliterated from the map. Greatly though certain zealots may desire the complete annihilation of the German tribes, vapourings of this kind are remote from the realm of practical politics. The statesmanship which at the moment haunts the Chancellories of Europe would not appear to be of very high quality. But statesmanship of an order infinitely higher might well recoil appalled from such problems as would result from any general collapse of the German Government and people. A far-sighted policy, which while never failing in fairness is withal generous and reasonable, is as the poles removed from that of a weak sentimentality which refuses to face the difficult facts of the present situation. The withdrawal of any great nation from the urgent task of work and production means loss and detriment to the world at large. Hence the need to let Germany both eat and work; more, the need to help her start afresh. She lies a beaten and prostrate nation to-day. We may push her over the brink and so precipitate new catastrophes. Or without sentiment and without illusion we may take a longer view; we may direct our policy towards ultimate ends of appeasement, towards the establishment of a saner and a better Europe unhaunted by the menace of vast aggressive forces, towards the recovery by Germany herself of her old birthright of music, poetry, and philosophy bartered by her for evil dreams of world power and domination. That new order cannot be founded on any basis of enduring hatred. We cannot offer the ideal of the League of Nations with the one hand, and policies which resolve themselves into starvation and oppression with the other. The policies are incompatible, and we must choose between them. The miserable suggestion frequently advanced, that as a victorious Germany would have ground us to powder, we should do to her as she would have done to us, cannot be sustained for a moment. Is our policy to be directed by German standards and influenced by German principles? All along we have proclaimed loudly that the war was fought so that the spirit and the principles of Germany should no longer terrorise the world. To adopt her principles, even in some modified form, is to give her in defeat a victory lost by her in the field. Our moral pretensions in this struggle have been very high ones, and moral pretensions are intolerable unless some effort is made to live up to them.