problem has the support of the Allied Governments? At best he has only a
vague persuasion. And consider how the matter looks "over there." The
German Government assures the German people that the Allies intend to
cut off Germany from the African supply of raw material. That would mean
the practical destruction of German economic life. It is something far
more vital to the mass of Germans than any question of Belgium or
Alsace-Lorraine. It is, therefore, one of the ideas most potent in
nerving the overstrained German people to continue their fight. Why are
we, and why are the German people, not given some definite assurance in
this matter? Given reparation in Europe, is Germany to be allowed a fair
share in the control and trade of a pooled and neutralized Central
Africa? Sooner or later we must come to some such arrangement. Why not
state it plainly now?

A second question is equally essential to any really permanent
settlement, and it is one upon which these eloquent but unsatisfactory
mouthpieces of ours turn their backs with an equal resolution, and that
is the fate of the Ottoman Empire. What in plain English are we up to
there? Whatever happens, that Humpty Dumpty cannot be put back as it was
before the war. The idea of the German imperialist, the idea of our own
little band of noisy but influential imperialist vulgarians, is
evidently a game of grab, a perilous cutting up of these areas into
jostling protectorates and spheres of influence, from which either the
Germans or the Allies (according to the side you are on) are to be
viciously shut out. On such a basis this war is a war to the death.
Neither Germany, France, Britain, Italy, nor Russia can live
prosperously if its trade and enterprise is shut out from this
cardinally important area. There is, therefore, no alternative, if we
are to have a satisfactory permanent pacification of the world, but
local self-development in these regions under honestly conceived