Evening Post. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 1918. THE PRUSSIAN HARVEST

Evening Post, Volume XCVI, Issue 113, 8 November 1918, Page 4

Evening Post. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 1918. THE PRUSSIAN HARVEST

No one taking a world-view of the crowded events of the last fifty odd months can fail to thank Providence for the sudden and overwhelming but altogether triumphant issue of the great war. We use the word triumphant in-.no drum-and-trumpet sense. What has triumphed is not this nation" nor that nation, but the principle of collective good—upheld by the greater part of the civilised world—against the principle of collective evil, whose standard-bearer was a mid-European group rendered formidable by a diabolical combination of modern science and -mediaeval philosophy. Prussia, along with the Federalised Germany which she fashioned in her own model after the French debacle in 1870, stood alone among the Great Powers in that she mado war her principal industry. Built up by war, extended by it, and made richer by it, Prussianised Germany acted on the naked principle that war pays, and her whole later life has been a preparation for a great crime by which she intended to seize those territories which, by the time Bismarck founded the German Empire, had already passed to other peoples under the valid title-deeds of discovery or prior possession. It mattered not to the Prussian warlords, to their mobilised professors, newspapers, Bernhardis, etc., that Germany already possessed, industrially and economically, a rich and increasingly commanding "place in the sun." Trade supremacy was not enough for the vaulting ambition of Hohcnzollern Prussia, whose heart was set on staking all she had in a desperate gamble for everything that everybody else had. To do this, she had to preserve, and therefore to commend to her people by subtle sophistry, all tho worst principles and practices of the era of dynastic wars. She had to gild cruelty, deify hatred, and parade her petty Caesar in the guise of the Almighty. And so capably was the poison distilled and distributed among the German people, that it has taken over four years of carnage to convince them that war does not pay; that Right is mightier than Might; and that he who bows the wind must reap the whirlwind. This last remark reminds us that, stepping down from a world-view to a narrower angle of vision, there is perceptible some note of complaint that the German people are escaping too lightly. It has been argued that the case of the Germans is analogous with that of the prize-fighter who, after passing through the summer of many lucrative victories to the autumn of his decline, shrewdly elects to take the count in preference to the knock-out. It is perfectly trne that Germany is op^en to this reproach. Under Prussian influence, she had become a Jack Johnson among the nations, a mighty swashbuckler, with all a swashbuckler's lack of the moral courage that seeks death in the last ditch. But in the moral adjustment—and that is the only adjustment thai count*—Germany has escaped nothing by her discreet appeal to the referee. Rather has she deprived , invading armies of a temptation to sin; and (if they resist it) herself of a temptation to slander them. We can imagine an invasion of Germany in which the Germans may not be treated as they treated the Belgians; but we can imagine no such invasion of Germany that will 'Hot afford material for the slanderous pens thaSt Hohenzollernism mobilises to perform its services of vilifying publicity. Until the principle that two wrongs do not make one right is utterly cancelled, we cannot contribute to the view that Germans' sensibilities should be attacked through snch instrumentalities as they employed upon the helpless Belgians. We hold, on the other hand, that the Allied Governments, in' their pursuit of a. peace of justice instead of a peace of revenge, are rising to tho full height of the great principles for which they stand. If there is to be vengeance upon the body of the German nation, it rests with that Higher Power by Whose aid the Allies' legitimate prayer for victory has already been answered. With a Providential victory, and with the enforcement of those principles of juafckes and retribution . wfeic.h naturally gpriflg thereijamj tkt^

Allies may well be willing to rest content. A nation which first wars in its neighbour's house, and then hoists the white flag before its own gate, can safely be left^ to work out its own salvation; for though it may not be repaid in its own coin, not one item in the account will be lost in the ultimate reckoning. . Repudiating the allegation that Britain is in the war to destroy a commercial rival, or to give vent to a national hate, Mr. Lloyd George stated on Sth January of this year: We are not fighting a war of aggression against the German people. The destruction or the disruption of Germany or the German people has never been a war-aim with us from the first day of this war to this day. This disclaimer is consistent with the conduct of the war, and we hope it will be consistent with what follows the war. The German people need neither be blackened on the one hand nor whitewashed on the other. Though Prussian militarism has been their evil genius, the people of Germany cannot devolve the whole of their guilt upon Prussia or even upon the war party. If the warlords were tenipters, the Germans were willing disciples. They lent their ear eagerly. to the superman flattery, and they entered consciously into an evil compact whereby they surrendered their individual liberty (so dear to Englishspeaking peoples) to the military disciplinarians, in return for a promise of world-power. Thus it was that no radical element in Germany—not even the Social Democracy—provided any adequate check on militarism, or on the Prussian plot to "murder Germany's neighbours while they slept." The compact of the German people with their rulers was almost an exact parallel'of Faust's bargain with the Devil; it materialised the same wonderful and diabolical happenings; and produced in the end the same distressing result. In all this the autocracy was primarily to blame, yet the people as a whole can by no means escape its terrible responsibility. The conflict between the German " efficiency" system and the democratic model of the English-speaking peoples; the wonderful sacrifices made by the Western democracies when called on to defend their own existence against a technically superior war-machine; their acceptance df military compulsion; the heroism of the citizen armies; and the ultimate victory making " the world safe for democracy " —all these and similar moralpolitical aspects of the war are dealt with in our Special Supplement. It suffices to conclude here with a thought that is not new but very true: All the early machinr cry imperfections of the British wareffort, all the mistakes, and many of the losses are, after all, an unanswerable proof of Britain's innocence of war-intent. Our unpreparedness acquits vs —even if nothing else did—of the authorship of the war, and throws up in the strongest light the mighty effort by which the citizen armies were created and shaped to ultimate victory. Perhaps the greatest fruit of the war is the bringing together of the two great branches of the AngloSaxon family, and their joint demonstration to the world at large that, in the face of any Caosarism, however stealthy, however " efficient," democracy is ever capable and ever willing to put forth supreme force, and to defend from any enemy the institutions and the liberties handed down to us by our fathers. It is in this way, and this alone, that the world has been preserved* for civilisation.