It was in these days that the last touches were being given to the great peace-treaty which was to make an end of war; and, but for that, I should have handed Bertrand my resignation and taken Barbara abroad. Until we saw the terms, however, we could not tell how far his gloomy predictions at Cannes would be fulfilled nor how far any one could undo the mischief that was reported from Paris. If we could believe a quarter of all we heard, the butchery for which Sanguszko and Boscarelli clamoured in Lucien’s verandah-parliament was taking place in one country after another; as I warned Saltash, three discontented Alsace-Lorraines were being created for one that was pacified; and the mood of the December election seemed to return as the public realized the helplessness of the defeated enemy. Outside the now notorious “Oakleigh gang” I found few to admit that any country but Germany had been responsible for the war; and on that foundation each man erected his own standard of retribution. My father-in-law went the length of collecting a party at the Eclectic Club to reason with me and to check the wrong-headed doctrines that poured forth, week after week, from Fetter Lane.
“You really seem to live in a world of your own,” he explained wearily. “I don’t hope to convince you; but, if you take a poll of your friends, on a question like indemnities . . .”
Before he had time to finish or I to answer, John Carstairs put his own case with alluring brevity:
“The Boche made the war. The Boche must pay for it.”
“What would have happened to our colonies if we’d lost?,” pursued Crawleigh, who seemed to regard the empire as a dumping-ground for the viceregally-inclined members of his family. German West Africa was below his dignity, but he had three sons. “These people mustn’t complain if they’re served in the same way.”
I recalled and quoted Bertrand’s dictum that no lasting peace could be established on a sense of grievance.
“I feel no tenderness towards Germany,” I said, “but aren’t we making another war inevitable?”
“You will make it inevitable,” said Mr. Justice Maitland, “if you let the last war go unpunished. No one will deny that the Germans broke a treaty, that they robbed, tortured, violated and murdered, not in the heat of fighting but as part of a terrorizing campaign ordered from headquarters. If acts like these go unpunished, every nation will know that it can take ‘frightfulness’ as its starting-point. Rape and mutilation will become sanctified usages of war. There will be a precedent.”
“That’s unanswerable,” I told the judge. “But, if this war proves anything, it proves that war doesn’t pay. I want to make that the great contribution of this war to history. If we impose a peace so unendurable that even war is no worse . . .”
Maitland interrupted me with a smiling head-shake: