But now grant that Germany wins this war and that that Great Middle Empire, which already, mark you, is a reality from Lille almost to Bagdad, remains and endures, who is going to control and rule it? Germany has forty-nine million tons of iron a year; Austria has very little iron, Italy has none, neither Roumania, Bulgaria or Serbia have any iron, Turkey has none except in Mesopotamia, which Germany will control. Who then will be the master of that Middle Empire? It will be only Prussia writ large. But Germany's control rests on other foundations still; her General Staff to-day controls the military establishments of all her allies, not a command can be given anywhere without Germany's assent. Moreover the printing presses of Berlin have been busy since the war broke out, stamping out paper money which has been loaned to Austria, Bulgaria and Turkey until these countries are hopelessly entangled in an economic net.
Now, in the Spring of 1918, we are about to receive the impact of a new peace drive from Germany. But what may we expect Germany to propose? The most liberal terms that have been suggested are a return to the status quo ante, peace without indemnities or annexations.
But remember that Germany has collected her indemnities as she has gone along. She took four hundred and eighty million francs from Brabant alone in one seizure; she has been taking sixty million francs a month, 720 million francs a year from Belgium since she violated her frontiers. She has looted every safe, national, civic or in private dwellings, she has taken the locomotives and the rolling stock from all railroads, the ploughs, harrows and live stock from all farms, the machinery from all factories, she has taken the art treasures from all museums, churches, palaces and homes; she has taken the mercury from the backs of mirrors, the wool from the mattresses, the linen from the shelves, she has taken name-plates, door knobs, knockers, curtain rods, carpet rods, kitchen utensils and the bells from the churches. She has drawn her net so fine that she has taken the francs and centimes from her prisoners and she has picked the pockets of the dead!
Advertisements appear in the Berlin papers wherein contractors offer to transport the loot from any conquered territory on most reasonable terms, while at number 35 Schoenberger Strasse there is a great warehouse where you might buy linens, laces, furniture, statuary, bric-a-brac, cradles, anything you like for almost anything you care to offer, for official Germany is selling the loot and plunder she has gathered in in violation of those Hague Regulations which Germany signed and swore to observe; "Family honor and rights, individual life and private property as well as religious convictions and worship must be respected." Article 46.
"Pillage is expressly forbidden," Article 47.
Austria staggers beneath her load of debt; Bulgaria and Turkey are hopelessly impoverished, England and France march on towards bankruptcy, Germany also is drawing very near financial ruin, but even at that she has gathered in such a harvest of wealth as no war has ever brought to any people, and now she asks for a "peace without indemnities"!
And she wants "Peace without annexations."
Belgium has been stripped to the bone. Her recovery will require centuries. Never again will Belgium be able to block Germany's pathway, never again shall there be an epic of Liège. So Germany will give back Belgium.
She will give back Serbia, but she cannot give back the Serbians. Those that have survived the battlefield, the famine, plague and pestilence are being, or have been, massacred. Her farms are tenantless, her cities empty, the grass is growing in her streets. Never again shall Serbia bar Germany's drive to the east. Her abandoned leaseholds invite true Germans to move in and take possession. So Germany will give back Serbia. But England must give back Mesopotamia and let Germany come down to the Persian Gulf! England must give back Syria and let Germany come down to the Suez Canal! England must give back the colonies in Africa that her own colonists have won and suffer anew Germany's let and hindrance to the Cape to Cairo railroad!
What wonder Germany desires a "Peace without indemnities or annexations"? But we have not yet exhausted Germany's profits in this war. Without counting her recent advances into Finland, Roumania and the Ukraine, without counting her last conquest in Russia, Germany has seized 500,000 square kilometers of conquered soil occupied by a population of forty-two millions; from these millions Germany has been drawing that forced labor which she has been paying at the biblical wage of a penny a day. I am often asked to admire the great fight Germany has put up against the entire world. But I know that that fight has been made possible only because, against all the instincts and laws of civilization, Germany has been enslaving huge populations, setting them to forbidden tasks in order to release every German for her armies. Without that slavery Germany could not have raised such armies or endured so long. Not to Germany, but to England and to France, which—while enslaving no nation, have given twenty per cent of their entire population to this war, is honor and reverence due! And this Germany wants peace because she is already dreaming of another war. Frederick Nauman, member of the Reichstag, tells us that she will build barns and granaries to hold a supply of food sufficient for her entire population for ten years; that she will build concrete entrenchments, impregnable lines of defence, along all her frontiers. Germany has already enforced a dreadful kind of concubinage, to avoid a worse term, upon the women of the occupied territories, and now we have evidence that she is enforcing that same dreadful system upon the women of her own land in utter disregard of all ethics, religion and the dignity of womanhood. At any expense Germany means to have boys that, twenty years from now, when France is still exhausted from this struggle and before England shall have regathered her strength, Germany shall have a new army to send over the Rhine, through spent Belgium and unrecuperated France. Then there shall be no halt before the walls of Paris, no battle of the Marne, no failure at Calais!