IV.
And now the conspiracy of lies and the conspiracy of silence is about to be exposed. The inexorable truth must be proclaimed. The German present is dark, but the future is desperate. The U-boat campaign has failed, the hope of a separate peace with Russia has vanished, the menace of America is drawing near. Greater exertions and more appalling sacrifices are needed, and yet all the motives for further sacrifices have vanished. The rulers were fighting for conquest and plunder. But it is now obvious that there can be no conquest nor plunder. The German people were misled into the belief that they were struggling in self-defence against the “Slav peril,” but since the Ides of March in Petrograd the Russian bugbear has disappeared. They were misled into the belief that they were struggling for liberty. But the Germans are now the only people still deprived of political liberty. Even the much-despised Slav has ceased to be a slave. The only slaves in Europe to-day are the subjects of the Hohenzollern.