are points in tropical Africa, in the East, islands in the ocean
to-day flying the British flag that might, with profit to German
trade and influence, be acquired by a victorious Germany. But none of
these things in itself, not all of them put together, would meet the
requirements of the German case, or ensure to Germany that future
tranquil expansion and peaceful rivalry the war had been fought to
secure. England would be weakened, and to some extent impoverished by
a war ending with such results; but her great asset, her possession
beyond price would still be hers--her geographical position. Deprive
her to-day, say of the Gold Coast, the Niger, Gibraltar, even of
Egypt, impose a heavy indemnity, and while Germany would barely have
recouped herself for the out-of-pocket losses of the war, England in
fact would have lost nothing, and ten years hence the Teuton would
look out again upon the same prospect, a Europe still dominated beyond
the seas by the Western islanders.

The work would have to be done all over again. A second Punic war
would have to be fought with this disadvantage--that the Atlantic
Sicily would be held and used still against the Northern Rome, by the
Atlantic Carthage.

A victorious Germany, in addition to such terms as she may find
it well to impose in her own immediate financial or territorial
interests, must so draft her peace conditions as to preclude her great
antagonist from ever again seriously imperilling the freedom of the
seas. I know of no way save one to make sure the open seas. Ireland,
in the name of Europe, and in the exercise of European right to
free the seas from the over-lordship of one European island, must be
resolutely withdrawn from British custody. A second Berlin Conference,
an international Congress must debate, and clearly would debate, with
growing unanimity the German proposal to restore Ireland to Europe.

The arguments in favour of that proposal would soon become so clear
from the general European standpoint, that save England and her
defeated allies, no power would oppose it.

Considerations of expediency no less than naval, mercantile, and
moral claims would range themselves on the side of Germany and a free
Ireland. For a free Ireland, not owned and exploited by England, but
appertaining to Europe at large, its ports available in a sense they
never can be while under British control for purposes of general
navigation and overseas intercourse, would soon become of