In 1914, Germany being victorious over all Europe, England included, after a four months overpowering campaign, as she expected, would certainly not have been satisfied with less than the conditions just specified. They were the goal for which she had been strenuously preparing for fifty years, her success, in 1870, being the preliminary opening of her conquests.
To bring Germany to renounce—temporarily—to her fond hopes of domination, it has required the heroic efforts and the untold sacrifices, in men and money, which Great Britain, her Colonial Empire, France, Italy, Belgium, Japan, betrayed Russia, and, LAST BUT NOT LEAST, the United States, have made during more than the last four years and which they are pledged to make until a successful issue.
The kind of peace as above would have been what can be very properly called—Germany's "OFFENSIVE PEACE." In Germany's opinion this would have been the just and durable peace dear to her so kind heart.
But having failed to carry the tremendous victory for which she had so powerfully prepared, Germany would NOW likely agree to negotiate what can be as properly called a "DEFENSIVE PEACE."
By "DEFENSIVE PEACE", I mean Germany negotiating NOW with her opponents with the determination to repulse, as much as possible, their just claims, to prevent them to the utmost limit to reap the legitimate fruits of their admirable endeavours, to thwart the realization of their noble aspirations to protect the world hereafter against her guilty and barbarous militarism.
Germany—I mean, of course, the Teutonic Imperial Government—has yet given no sign of a change of mind on the vital points at stake in the consideration of the restoration of peace. If the fortune of arms was once more to favour her armies, her blood stained for Colours, she would, to-morrow, be as mercilessly exacting as she would have been, in 1914, had she triumphantly entered Paris inside of two months after her challenge to the civilized world.
Germany is surely not a convert to sound Christian principles. She will not repent for her crimes. She does not feel the tortures of remorse at her foul deeds. She would certainly be a relapser, in the near future, if the Allies, unwisely heeding the clamour of the "pacifists", imprudently gratified her ACTUAL wish for a peace compromise.
And before long Humanity would be forced to go again, in much aggravated conditions, over the way of the cross she has been threading along for nearly five years, steeped to the knees in the blood of millions of her heroic sons, with a reorganized Germany this time straining all the Huns' accumulated power to lead Civilization to her Calvary.
With God's grace, that shall not be. Five years of martyrdom have deserved and will receive JUSTICE.
After having explained what Germany, from her stand-point, considers a Just and Durable Peace, let us see what such a peace means from the Allies' stand-point.