cuniary control, to discredit
precedent and constituted authority, it is scarcely conceivable, e.g.,
that the victorious allies would go the length of coercively discarding
the German Imperial dynasty and the kept classes that with it constitute
the Imperial State, and of replacing it with a democratic organisation
of the people in the shape of a modern commonwealth; and without a
change of that nature, affecting that nation and such of its allies as
would remain on the map, no league of pacific neutrals would be able to
manage its affairs, even for a time, except on a war-footing that would
involve a competitive armament against future dynastic enterprises from
the same quarter. Which comes to saying that a lasting peace is possible
on no other terms than the disestablishment of the Imperial dynasty and
the abrogation of all feudalistic remnants of privilege in the
Fatherland and its allies, together with the reduction of those
countries to the status of commonwealths made up of ungraded men.

* * * * *

It is easy to speculate on what the conditions precedent to such a
pacific league of neutrals must of necessity be; but it is not therefore
less difficult to make a shrewd guess as to the chances of these
conditions being met. Of these conditions precedent, the chief and
foremost, without which any other favorable circumstances are
comparatively idle, is a considerable degree of neutralisation,
extending to virtually all national interests and pretensions, but more
particularly to all material and commercial interests of the federated
peoples; and, indispensably and especially, such neutralisation would
have to extend to the nations from whom aggression is now apprehended,
as, e.g., the German people. But such neutralisation could not
conceivably reach the Fatherland unless that nation were made over in
the image of democracy, since the Imperial State is, by force of the
terms, a warlike and unneutral power. This would seem to be the
ostensibly concealed meaning of the allied governments in proclaiming
that their aim is to break German militarism without doing harm to the
German people.

As touches the neutralisation of the democratically rehabilitated
Fatherland, or in default of that, as touches the peace terms to be
offered the Imperial government, the prime article among the
stipulations would seem to be abolition of all trade discrimination
against Germany or by Germany against an