Great and glorious are the rewards of success; terrible indeed are the penalties which must await on failure. I implore every single one of my readers to do whatever in him lies to help in the great task of arousing this nation to the fullest possible realisation of the fact that we must either win this War or take our places, humbled and broken, among the nations that no longer count in the councils of the world. For us, at any rate, there is no middle course.
We have to remember that this War will never be settled decisively unless the Allies are able to invade Germany and to inflict a crushing defeat upon the armed force of the enemy. It may be that Germany, faced with certain economic ruin, will sooner or later sue for peace, hoping at least to protect her home territory, to keep her internal resources untouched to be ready for the economic war which will follow the declaration of peace, and to “cut her losses” rather than risk worse things.
Such a peace would be a disaster as great as the War itself, and much greater than the losses involved in its continuance to a decisive ending. It would leave Germany proud in the consciousness that she had faced, not altogether unsuccessfully, an alliance of powerful enemies, and she would simply set to work upon fresh designs of conquest and of preparation for a renewal of the struggle as soon as things looked sufficiently hopeful. And we may be quite sure that Britain, which has had so large a share in the checking of Germany’s over-ambitious designs, would be the principal enemy to be aimed at.
Never again could we hope to face Germany upon such favourable terms, and with such powerful Allies. We do not fear the issue of a conflict with Germany single-handed so long as we are warned in time to make our preparations for attack, but we do not want to see the wealth of our Empire and of the other nations wasted in the future in that mad competition of armaments which Germany has forced on the world. Rather would we see the years that are to come years of peace, when the nations shall enjoy a well-earned rest from the burden of militarism which German designs have imposed upon civilisation.
Of all the perils by which we are now threatened, perhaps the very gravest is the conclusion of a premature peace which, in the very nature of things, could be nothing more than a thinly veiled truce to prepare for a new and even more titanic conflict. That is the game which the Germans are playing to-day, and its dangers to us were admirably pointed out by Lord Rosebery in a recent speech. He said:
There is only one thing which I sometimes fear. It is that when successes begin there may be some weak-minded cry in this country for a premature peace. A premature peace means a short peace, and a war that will be even worse than this to follow. Therefore let all of us unite in the resolve that while no exertion shall be wanting on our part to bring the War to a triumphant conclusion and the Prussian bloodthirsty tyrants to their knees, yet, on the other hand, not a finger will be raised to accelerate peace before it is justly due.
To that grave and noble warning perhaps I may add the testimony of an officer who is now serving at the front. He writes:
At the present moment there are millions of French, Belgian, Russian, and Serbian peasants wandering about homeless, and there are thousands besides who have died as the result of this wandering about, or who have been actually killed by the Germans as though they had been soldiers in uniform.
Now look at Germany—Germany who will soon be ready for peace! She has hardly had her territory touched; her people do not know what it means to have war waged in their own country.
What I say is that this War must not be finished until it has been carried right into the heart of Germany, so that the German people may know and understand what France, Belgium, Serbia, and Russia have gone through during the last fifteen months.
It is a frightful nightmare to all of us out here that we shall suddenly be told one morning that peace is declared while we are still sitting on this present line of trenches through Belgium and France. No one wants peace more than we do out here, but I—and I know most soldiers are the same—would rather die than see a peace made before we have shown them in Germany what the peasants of the Allies have suffered.
It’s no good being soft-hearted with the Germans. I don’t think there is any danger of the other Allies being carried away by the premature peace talk; it’s only England, who does not know what war means, who may be.
Over and over again the Germans have attempted, with barefaced effrontery, to buy off our Allies, to attempt to induce them to forsake the common cause, to acquiesce, in short, in the betrayal of Britain. That to-day is the keystone of the game of chicanery and fraud which passes in Berlin for diplomacy. There can be no doubt that to France, to Italy, and to Russia splendid gains are freely open as the price of a dishonourable peace; there is to-day hardly any concession which Germany would not willingly make to either of the Allies to secure their withdrawal from the contest.
The one aim of Germany to-day is to detach Britain’s Allies, because Germany thinks that with Britain as her sole antagonist she would be sure of ultimate victory. And with her warped code of national honour, with her cynical disregard of the plighted word, she simply cannot understand why the baits she is ready to offer are rejected on all hands with loathing and scorn. She cannot understand the obligations of national honour; she cannot understand that a nation may be too proud to stoop to betrayal for the reward of a bribe. Happily, the bonds which unite the Allies hold firm; and if the Germans cannot see and understand the meaning of the solemn renewal of the Allies’ pledge to Belgium, so much the worse for them. Probably they think it is all a piece of bluff, and that we are as ready as they themselves are for peace.