Hohenzollern and Hapsburg Imperialisms, and that means, if it means
anything at all and is not mere lying rhetoric, that we should insist
upon Germany becoming free and democratic, that is to say, in effect if
not in form republican, and upon a series of national republics, Polish,
Hungarian, Serbo-Croatian, Bulgarian, and the like, in Eastern Europe,
grouped together if possible into congenial groups--crowned republics it
might be in some cases, in the case of the Serb for example, but in no
case too much crowned--that we should join with this renascent Germany
and with these thus liberalized Powers and with our Allies and with the
neutrals in one great League of Free Nations, trading freely with one
another, guaranteeing each other freedom, and maintaining a world-wide
peace and disarmament and a new reign of law for mankind.

If that is not what we are out for, then I do not understand what we are
out for; there is dishonesty and trickery and diplomacy and foolery in
the struggle, and I am no longer whole-hearted for such a half-hearted
war. If after a complete victory we are to bolster up the Hohenzollerns,
Hapsburgs, and their relations, set up a constellation of more cheating
little subordinate kings, and reinstate that system of diplomacies and
secret treaties and secret understandings, that endless drama of
international threatening and plotting, that never-ending arming, that
has led us after a hundred years of waste and muddle to the supreme
tragedy of this war, then the world is not good enough for me and I
shall be glad to close my eyes upon it. I am not alone in these
sentiments. I believe that in writing thus I am writing the opinion of
the great mass of reasonable British, French, Italian, Russian, and
American men. I believe, too, that this is the desire also of great
numbers of Germans, and that they would, if they could believe us,
gladly set aside their present rulers to achieve this plain common good
for mankind.

But, the reader will say, what evidence is there of any republican
feeling in Germany? That is always the objection made to any reasonable
discussion of the war--and as most of us are denied access to German
papers, it is difficult to produce quotations; and even when one does,
there are plenty of fools to suggest and believe that the entire German
Press is an elaborate camouflage. Yet in the German Press there is far
more criticism of militant imperialism than those who have no access to