great measure depend on the degree of clemency or
rigor with which the superior authority might enforce its rule. It is
not that a peace plan of this nature need precisely be considered to
fall outside the limits of possibility, on account of this necessary
condition, but it is at the best a manifestly doubtful matter. Advocates
of a negotiated peace should not fail to keep in mind and make public
that the plan which they advocate carries with it, as a sequel or
secondary phase, such an unconditional surrender and a consequent regime
of non-resistance, and that there still is grave doubt whether the
peoples of these Western nations are at present in a sufficiently
tolerant frame of mind, or can in the calculable future come in for such
a tolerantly neutral attitude in point of national pride, as to submit
in any passable fashion to any alien Imperial rule.

If the spiritual difficulty presented by this prevalent spirit of
national pride--sufficiently stubborn still, however inane a conceit it
may seem on sober reflection--if this animus of factional
insubordination could be overcome or in some passable measure be
conciliated or abated, there is much to be said in favor of such a plan
of peaceable submission to an extraneous and arbitrary authority, and
therefore also for that plan of negotiated peace by means of which
events would be put in train for its realisation.

Any passably dispassionate consideration of the projected regime will
come unavoidably to the conclusion that the prospectively subject
peoples should have no legitimate apprehension of loss or disadvantage
in the material respect. It is, of course, easy for an unreflecting
person to jump to the conclusion that subjection to an alien power must
bring grievous burdens, in the way of taxes and similar impositions. But
reflection will immediately show that no appreciable increase, over the
economic burdens already carried by the populace under their several
national establishments, could come of such a move.

As bearing on this question it is well to call to mind that the
contemplated imperial dominion is designed to be very wide-reaching and
with very ample powers. Its nearest historical analogue, of course, is
the Roman imperial dominion--in the days of the Antonines--and that the
nearest analogue to the projected German peace is the Roman peace, in
the days of its best security. There is every warrant for the
presumption that the contemplated Imperial do