In the Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
page 49 of 115 (42%)
page 49 of 115 (42%)
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as acceptable to a reasonable man in Berlin as they are to a reasonable
man in Paris or London or Petrograd or Constantinople. There are to be no conquests, no domination of recalcitrant populations, no bitter insistence upon vindictive penalties, and there must be something in the nature of a world-wide League of Nations to keep the peace securely in future, to "make the world safe for democracy," and maintain international justice. To that the general mind of the world has come to-day. Why, then, does the waste and killing go on? Why is not the Peace Conference sitting now? Manifestly because a small minority of people in positions of peculiar advantage, in positions of trust and authority, and particularly the German reactionaries, prevent or delay its assembling. The answer which seems to suffice in all the Allied countries is that the German Imperial Government--that the German Imperial Government alone--stands in the way, that its tradition is incurably a tradition of conquest and aggression, that until German militarism is overthrown, etc. Few people in the Allied countries will dispute that that is broadly true. But is it the whole and complete truth? Is there nothing more to be done on our side? Let us put a question that goes to the very heart of the problem. Why does the great mass of the German people still cling to its incurably belligerent Government? The answer to that question is not overwhelmingly difficult. The German people sticks to its militarist imperialism as Mazeppa stuck to his horse; because it is bound to it, and the wolves pursue. The attentive student of the home and foreign propaganda literature of the German |
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