disingenuousness of our early treatment of the Russian Revolution. What
I want to point out here is the supreme importance of a clear lead in
this matter _now_ in order that we should state our War Aims
effectively.

In every war there must be two sets of War Aims kept in mind; we ought
to know what we mean to do in the event of victory so complete that we
can dictate what terms we choose, and we ought to know what, in the
event of a not altogether conclusive tussle, are the minimum terms that
we should consider justified us in a discontinuance of the tussle. Now,
unless our leading statesmen are humbugs and unless we are prepared to
quarrel with America in the interests of the monarchist institutions of
Europe, we should, in the event of an overwhelming victory, destroy both
the Hohenzollern and Hapsburg Imperialisms, and that means, if it means
anything at all and is not mere lying rhetoric, that we should insist
upon Germany becoming free and democratic, that is to say, in effect if
not in form republican, and upon a series of national republics, Polish,
Hungarian, Serbo-Croatian, Bulgarian, and the like, in Eastern Europe,
grouped together if possible into congenial groups--crowned republics it
might be in some cases, in the case of the Serb for example, but in no
case too much crowned--that we should join with this renascent Germany
and with these thus liberalized Powers and with our Allies and with the
neutrals in one great League of Free Nations, trading freely with one
another, guaranteeing each other freedom, and maintaining a world-wide
peace and disarmament and a new reign of law for mankind.

If that is not what we are out for, then I do not understand what we are
out for; there is dishonesty and trickery and diplomacy and foolery in
the struggle, and I am no longer whole-hearted for such a half-hearted
war. If after a complete victory we are to bolster up the Hohenzollerns,