And now, with all this in our minds, let us turn to consider the vexed
question of the settlement after the war. There lies before the Western
world the greatest of all choices, the choice between destruction and
salvation. But that choice does not depend merely on the issue of the
war. It depends upon what is done or left undone by the co-operation of
all when the war does at last stop. Two conceptions of the future are
contending in all nations. One is the old bad one, that which has presided
hitherto at every peace and prepared every new war. It assumes that the
object of war is solely to win victory, and the object of victory solely
to acquire more power and territory. On this view, if the Germans win, they
are to annex territory east and west: Belgium and half France, say the more
violent; the Baltic provinces of Russia, strategic points of advantage, say
the more moderate. On the other hand, if the Allies win, the Allies are to
divide the German colonies, the French are to regain Alsace-Lorraine, and,
as the jingoes add, they are to take the whole of the German provinces on
the left bank of the Rhine, and even territory beyond it. The Italians are
to have not only Italia Irredenta but hundreds of thousands of reluctant
Slavs in Dalmatia; the Russians Constantinople, and perhaps Posen and
Galicia. Further, such money indemnities are to be taken as it may prove
possible to exact from an already ruined foe; trade and commerce with
the enemy is to be discouraged or prohibited; and, above all, a bitter
and unforgiving hatred is to reign for ever between the victor and the
vanquished. This is the kind of view of the settlement of Europe that is
constantly appearing in the articles and correspondence of the Press of all
countries. Ministers are not as careful as they should be to repudiate it.
The nationalist and imperialist cliques of all nations endorse it. It is,
one could almost fear, for something like this that the peoples are being
kept at war, and the very existence of civilization jeopardized.

Now, whether anything of this kind really can be achieved by the war,