disputation about War Aims?

As to the first question, I would say that the gist of the dispute
between the Central Powers and the world can be written easily without
undue cramping in an ordinary handwriting upon a postcard. It is the
second question that needs answering. And the reason why the second
question has to be asked and answered is this, that several of the
Allies, and particularly we British, are not being perfectly plain and
simple-minded in our answer to the first, that there is a division among
us and in our minds, and that our division is making us ambiguous in our
behaviour, that it is weakening and dividing our action and
strengthening and consolidating the enemy, and that unless we can drag
this slurred-over division of aim and spirit into the light of day and
_settle it now_, we are likely to remain double-minded to the end of the
war, to split our strength while the war continues and to come out of
the settlement at the end with nothing nearly worth the strain and
sacrifice it has cost us.

And first, let us deal with that postcard and say what is the essential
aim of the war, the aim to which all other aims are subsidiary. It is,
we have heard repeated again and again by every statesman of importance
in every Allied country, to defeat and destroy military imperialism, to
make the world safe for ever against any such deliberate aggression as
Germany prepared for forty years and brought to a climax when she
crossed the Belgian frontier in 1914. We want to make anything of that
kind on the part of Germany or of any other Power henceforth impossible
in this world. That is our great aim. Whatever other objects may be
sought in this war no responsible statesman dare claim them as anything
but subsidiary to that; one can say, in fact, this is our sole aim, our
other aims being but parts of it. Better that millions should die now,