At present every discomfort and disappointment of the German people is being sedulously diverted into rage against the Allies, and particularly against the English. This is all very well as long as the war goes on with a certain effect of hopefulness. But what when presently the beam has so tilted against Germany that an unprofitable peace has become urgent and inevitable? How can the Hohenzollern suddenly abandon his pose of righteous indignation and make friends with the accursed enemy, and how can he make any peace at all with us while he still proclaims us accursed? Either the Emperor has to go to his people and say, "We promised you victory and it is defeat," or he has to say, "It is not defeat, but we are going to make peace with these Russian barbarians who invaded us, with the incompetent English who betrayed us, with all these degenerate and contemptible races you so righteously hate and despise, upon such terms that we shall never be able to attack them again. This noble and wonderful war is to end in this futility and--these graves. You were tricked into it, as you were tricked into war in 1870--but this time it has not turned out quite so well. And besides, after all, we find we can continue to get on with these people." ... In either case, I do not see how he can keep the habitual and cultivated German hate pointing steadily away from himself. So long as the war is going on that may be done, but when the soldiers come home the hate will come home as well. In times of war peoples may hate abroad and with some unanimity. But after the war, with no war going on or any prospect of a fresh war, with every exploiter and every industrial tyrant who has made his unobtrusive profits while the country scowled and spat at England, stripped of the cover of that excitement, then it is inevitable that much of this noble hate of England will be seen for the cant it is. The cultivated hate of the war phase, reinforced by the fresh hate born of confusion and misery, will swing loose, as it were, seeking dispersedly for objects. The petty, incessant irritations of proximity will count for more; the national idea for less. The Hohenzollerns and the Junkers will have to be very nimble indeed if the German accomplishment of hate does not swing round upon them.