g other victims the United States are invited to approve, in order
that to-morrow their own growing navy may be put into a like posture
with that of a defeated Germany.
With the Kiel Canal "handed to Denmark," as one of the fruits of
British victory, as Lord Charles Beresford yesterday magnanimously
suggested, how long may it be before the Panama Canal shall be found
to be "a threat to peace" in the hands of those who constructed it?
A rival fleet in being, whether the gunners be Teuton or Anglo-Saxon
unless the Admiralty controlling it is seated at Whitehall, will
always be an eyesore to the Mistress of the seas, in other words, "a
threat to the peace of the world."
The war of armaments cannot be ended by the disarming of the German
people. To hand Europe over to a triumphal alliance of Russian and
French militarism, while England controls the highways and waterways
of mankind by a fleet whose function is "to dictate the maritime
law of nations," will beget indeed a new Europe, but a Europe
whose acquiescence is due to fear and the continued pressure of
well-sustained force--a Europe submitted to the despotism of unnatural
alliances designed to arrest the laws of progress.
The laws of progress demand that efficiency shall prevail. The crime
of Germany has been superior efficiency, not so much in the arts
of war as in the products of peace. If she go down to-day before a
combination of brute force and unscrupulous intelligence her fall
cannot be permanent. Germany has within herself the forces that ensure
revival, and revival means recovery. Neither France nor Russia nor
both combined, can give to Europe what Britain now designs to take
from it by their help.
Whatever may be the result of this war on the field of battle, to
France indeed it can bring only one end. For her there is no future
save that of a military empire. Her life blood is dried up. This war
will sweep away all power of recuperation. She will remain impotent
to increase her race, sterile of new forces for good, her young men's
blood gone to win the barren fields of Alsace. Her one purpose in the
new Europe will be to hold a sword, not her own, over the struggling
form of a resurgent Germany in the interests of another people. Let
Germany lose 1,000,000 men in the fighting of to-day, she can recover
them in two years of peace. But to France the losses of this war,
whether she win or lose, cannot be made good in a quarter of a century
of child
|