At any cost this class of pampered and privileged traitors intend to
have peace while the Kaiser is still on his throne. If not they face a
new world--in which their part will be small indeed. And with the utmost
ingenuity they maintain a dangerous vagueness about the Allied peace
terms, _with the sole object of preventing a revolutionary movement in
Germany_.

Let me put it to the reader exactly why our failure to say plainly and
exactly and conclusively what we mean to do about a score of points, and
particularly about German economic life after the war, paralyses the
penitents and friends and helpers that we could now find in Germany. Let
me ask the reader to suppose himself a German in Germany at the present
time. Of course if he was, he is sure that he would hate the Kaiser as
the source of this atrocious war, he would be bitterly ashamed of the
Belgian iniquity, of the submarine murders, and a score of such stains
upon his national honour; and he would want to alter his national system
and make peace. Hundreds of thousands of Germans are in that mood now.
But as most of us have had to learn, a man may be bitterly ashamed of
this or that incident in his country's history--what Englishman, for
instance, can be proud of Glencoe?--he may disbelieve in half its
institutions and still love his country far too much to suffer the
thought of its destruction. I prefer to see my country right, but if it
comes to the pinch and my country sins I will fight to save her from the
destruction her sins may have brought upon her. That is the natural way
of a man.

But suppose a German wished to try to start a revolutionary movement in
Germany at the present time, have we given him any reason at all for
supposing that a Germany liberated and democratized, but, of course,
divided and weakened as she would be bound to be in the process, would