The Way to Win

by William Le Queux

Victory with Honour.

We shall not sheathe the sword, which we have not lightly drawn, until Belgium recovers in full measure all and more than all that she has sacrificed, until France is secured from the menace of aggression, until the rights of the smaller nationalities of Europe are placed upon an unassailable foundation, until the military domination of Prussia is fully and finally destroyed. That is a great task worthy of a great nation.

Such were the magnificent phrases in which Mr Asquith, at the Guildhall on November 9, 1914, expressed, as I hope, once and for all, the determined resolve of the British people.

We know to-day even more fully than we did before that there can be no peace in the world until “the military domination of Prussia” is fully and finally destroyed.

I think, however, the British people and their Allies would make one change in Mr Asquith’s glowing speech. They would substitute “Germany” for “Prussia.” For the blood-guilt of Prussia has infected the entire German nation as with a species of moral leprosy. The German nation as a whole, and not merely the Prussian portion of it, has steeped itself in the vileness of which Prussia, admittedly, was the first and greatest exemplar.

Gone for ever is the theory that we are at war merely with “Prussianism.” Our one aim and object to-day must be the utter destruction of the military power of the German Empire as a whole, and the squaring of civilisation’s long account with the Germanic peoples. Assuredly until they are brought to see that the courses upon which they have willingly embarked are vile and cruel and wrong—and they can be taught this only by the stern argument of force—the peace of Europe cannot long be preserved. If we falter now, if we and our Allies are content with anything less than overwhelming and decisive victory, it is as certain as the rising of to-morrow’s sun that Germany will at once set herself to prepare for a further war of aggression. Nothing but the most decisive humiliation will convince her that the world has no use for men who aim at world-domination. Nothing less will bring home to the minds of her people the clear truth that the megalomaniac dreams of their Emperor have been the sole source of the immeasurable disasters which this War has inflicted upon them.

It is impossible to emphasise too strongly the undeniable truth that for the British Empire this War is and must be decisive. If, in the face of all perils and sacrifices, we persevere to the noble end which Mr Asquith has sketched for us, we can surely see rising in the not very distant future visions of an Empire more glorious even than that of to-day.

In the madness of his dream of world-dominion, the Kaiser fondly believed that one of the first results of the War would be the destruction of the British Empire; he thought that its component parts would fly apart as if by centrifugal force. Never in this world has a rapacious and domineering ruler made a more fatal mistake. The influence of the War upon the constituent elements of the British Empire has been centripetal rather than centrifugal; instead of flying off at a tangent as the Kaiser hoped, our scattered Dominions have drawn in closer and closer still to the tiny island set in the North Sea which, to Britons all the world over, is ever and always “home.” War has truly forged new links between us and our brothers overseas, and we may rest content that nothing has contributed more powerfully to the shattering of the Kaiser’s dreams than the glorious story of the Anzacs in Gallipoli, the heroism of the Canadians at Ypres, and the devotion with which the dusky sons of India have flung themselves into the world-fray in the cause of the British Raj. Not disruption but unity has sprung from the War. If we preserve that glorious unity to the end, persevering undismayed through the long days that are yet to come of peril and darkness, we shall bequeath to our children and our children’s children a heritage which will grow brighter and fairer with the passing of the changing years.

But there must be no faltering in our great resolve, no surrender to weariness or pain, no looking back until our task is done. For us, very literally, now is the appointed time. If we fail now, if we put off our harness with our task unfulfilled, if, having set our hand to the plough, we become faint and weak, it needs no strong imagination to see stretching out before us the downward path which must lead the British Empire to disruption and decay.

No matter what the cost, no matter what the sacrifice, we must win this War, and win it so decisively that the menace of Teuton aggression and arrogance, of the immoral doctrine that brute force is the only right, shall be ever removed from civilisation.