he word which would secure the peace, to use every effort to
bring about a general understanding among the great powers which would
banish all fears of an anti-German combination. It was of no use. The
reply was the suggestion that Britain should bind herself to neutrality
in this war on the following conditions: (a) that Germany should be
given a free hand to violate the neutrality of Belgium (which Britain
was bound by treaty to defend), on the understanding that Belgium
should be reinstated after she had served her purpose, if she had
offered no resistance; Belgium, be it noted, being bound in honour to
offer resistance by the very treaty which Germany proposed to violate;
and (b) that after France had been humiliated and beaten to the earth
for the crime of possessing territories which Germany coveted, she
should be restored to independence, and Germany should be content to
annex her 5,000,000 square miles of colonies. In return for this
undertaking Britain was to be--allowed to hold aloof from the war, and
await her turn.

There is no getting over these facts. The aim of Germany had come to be
nothing less than world-supremacy. The destiny of the whole globe was
to be put to the test. Surely this was the very insanity of megalomania.

X

WHAT OF THE NIGHT?

The gigantic conflict into which the ambitions of Germany have plunged
the world is the most tremendous event in human history, not merely
because of the vast forces engaged, and the appalling volume of
suffering which has resulted from it, but still more because of the
magnitude of the principles for which it is being fought. It is a war
to secure the right of communities which are linked together by the
national spirit to determine their own destinies; it is a war to
maintain the principles of humanity, the sanctity of formal
undertakings between states, and the possibility of the co-operation of
free peoples in the creation of a new and better world-order; it is a
war between two principles of government, the principle of military
autocracy and the principle of self-government. With all these aspects
of the mighty struggle we are not here immediately concerned, though
they have an intimate bearing upon our main theme: some of them have
been analysed elsewhere.[10] But what does concern us most directly,
and what makes this war the culmination of the long story which we have
endeavoured to survey, is that this is a war in which, as in no earlier
w