CHAPTER IV
Peace Without Honour
The argument therefore turns back to a choice between the two alternatives alluded to: peace in submission to the rule of the German dynastic establishment (and to Japan), or peace through elimination of these enterprising Powers. The former alternative, no doubt, is sufficiently unattractive, but it is not therefore to be put aside without a hearing. As goes without saying, it is repugnant to the patriotic sentiments of those peoples whom the Imperial German establishment have elected for submission. But if this unreflecting patriotic revulsion can once be made amenable to reason, there is always something to be said in favor of such a plan of peaceable submission, or at least in extenuation of it; and if it is kept in mind that the ulterior necessity of such submission must always remain in perspective as a condition precedent to a peaceful settlement, so long as one or both of these enterprising Powers remains intact, it will be seen that a sane appraisal of the merits of such a régime of peace is by no means uncalled for. For neither of these two Powers is there a conclusive issue of endeavour short of paramount dominion.
There should also be some gain of insight and sobriety in recalling that the Intellectuals of the Fatherland, who have doubtless pondered this matter longer and more
dispassionately than all other men, have spoken very highly of the merits of such a plan of universal submission to the rule of this German dynastic establishment. They had, no doubt, been considering the question both long and earnestly, as to what would, in the light of reason, eventually be to the best interest of those peoples whose manifest destiny was eventual tutelage under the Imperial crown; and there need also be no doubt that in that time (two years past) they therefore spoke advisedly and out of the fulness of the heart on this head. The pronouncements that came out of the community of Intellectuals in that season of unembarrassed elation and artless avowal are doubtless to be taken as an outcome of much thoughtful canvassing of what had best be done, not as an enforced compromise with untoward necessities but as the salutary course freely to be pursued with an eye single to the best good of all concerned.
It is true, the captious have been led to speak slightingly of the many utterances of this tenure coming out of the community of Intellectuals, as, e.g., the lay sermons of Professor Ostwald dating back to that season; but no unprejudiced reader can well escape the persuasion that these, as well as the very considerable volume of similar pronouncements by many other men of eminent scholarship and notable for benevolent sentiments, are faithfully to be accepted as the expressions of a profound conviction and a consciously generous spirit. In so speaking of the advantages to be derived by any subject people from submission to the German Imperial rule, these Intellectuals are not to be construed as formulating the drift of vulgar patriotic sentiment among their compatriots at large, but rather as giving out the deliverances of their own more sensitive spirit and maturer delibera
tion, as men who are in a position to see human affairs and interests in a larger perspective. Such, no doubt, would be their own sense of the matter.
Reflection on the analogous case of the tutelage exercised by the American government over the subject Philippinos may contribute to a just and temperate view of what is intended in the régime of tutelage and submission so spoken for by the German Intellectuals,—and, it may be added, found good by the Imperial statesmen. There would, of course, be the difference, as against the case of the Philippinos, that whereas the American government is after all answerable, in the last resort and in a somewhat random fashion, to a popular opinion that runs on democratic preconceptions, the German Imperial establishment on the other hand is answerable to no one, except it be to God, who is conceived to stand in somewhat the relation of a silent partner, or a minority stockholder in this dynastic enterprise.