In this manner the worst problems on which general peace depends would be solved, and with these problems that of armaments, which it would no longer be dangerous nor humiliating to reduce if the general reduction, extending even to Japan and seconded by all the republics of the New World, were agreed to by all. Certainly such an agreement would be difficult to develop; it would terrify the diplomats, but outside of such an agreement I see in perspective nothing but perpetual war, internal revolution, and general ruin.
Fifth Letter.
PARIS, Sept. 18, 1914.
* * * The pride of an empire may not be crushed without a bitter struggle. The German Government has at its disposition the live force of a young and growing people. However, the day is coming when that people, aware that they have been deceived, will be able to repudiate their Government, just as the French people did after Sedan. Meanwhile the German armies have stopped their retreat in order to form a new line of resistance. But to what good? This line will be overthrown, and in the end the German Army will be obliged to retreat in disorder and again to cross the land which it has laid waste.
The true difficulties, in my opinion, are going to commence when the conquered Germans must submit to the conditions made by the conquerors. The victors will be able to agree, I believe, to stop the war and to dictate conditions. But will they agree to make these conditions moderate? That is the question. At that moment even France will be far from unanimous, as she has been unanimous in defending herself. France is of one opinion on these principal points:
1. Alsace-Lorraine ought to be liberated at last, free to return to France; her rights ought to be respected and recognized. Such liberation should extend as far as possible to every country in Europe whose right has been violated.
2. We must make an end of ruinous armed peace, invented, so it was said, to prevent war, but which has made war inevitable. German militarism must be crushed unless it is again to become a menace and give the signal for another competition of armaments. This peace will be only a truce, a sinister comedy, unless it is crowned by a general convention of disarmament, to which Germany must subscribe with all the others and before all the others.
3. Arbitration, conciliation, all the means already provided for amicable adjustment, and if possible for the prevention of international conflicts, should be organized on a more solid and more definite basis than in the past, with the sanction, or at least the maximum of necessary precautions, of a federated Europe. All which we have done at The Hague, far from being lost, will serve as a foundation for the building of a pacific federation.
On these three points one may prophesy a unanimity almost complete; but the division will begin when it comes to distinguishing between Germany and the empire, between the German people who have a right to live and the German Empire which opposed the right to live; the division will begin when some demand the humiliation of Germany, others the ruin of her colonies, and of her very life. France, who has defended peace, will, I am sure, also defend justice; but justice will not triumph without difficulty. And it is here that the United States will render great service, if the United States has preserved, as one can see so clearly in the Mexican crisis, her moral authority and disinterestedness.
In the cuttings from the American papers which you have sent me I have read with great disquietude an article which says that, after all, the United States "will be the beneficiary of the European war." This article claims that the United States may profit very easily by this war to take away from Germany her commerce in the three Americas, &c. It is a dangerous form of reasoning, which, however, is not new.