merely personal and wasteful claims. Into the consequences of this we
have now to look a little more closely.

It was the weaknesses of Germany that made this war, and not her
strength. The weaknesses of Germany are her Imperialism, her Junkerism,
and her intense, sentimental Nationalism; for the former would have no
German ascendancy that was not achieved by force, and, with the latter,
made the idea of German ascendancy intolerable to all mankind. Better
death, we said. And had Germany been no more than her Court, her
Junkerism, her Nationalism, the whole system would have smashed beneath
the contempt and indignation of the world within a year.

But the strength of Germany has saved her from that destruction. She was
at once the most archaic and modern of states. She was Hohenzollern,
claiming to be Caesar, and flaunting a flat black eagle borrowed from
Imperial Rome; and also she was the most scientific and socialist of
states. It is her science and her Socialism that have held and forced
back the avengers of Belgium for more than a year and a half. If she has
failed as a conqueror, she has succeeded as an organisation. Her
ambition has been thwarted, and her method has been vindicated. She
will, I think, be so far defeated in the contest of endurance which is
now in progress that she will have to give up every scrap of territorial
advantage she has gained; she may lose most of her Colonial Empire; she
may be obliged to complete her modernisation by abandoning her militant
Imperialism; but she will have at least the satisfaction of producing
far profounder changes in the chief of her antagonists than those she
herself will undergo.

The Germany of the Hohenzollerns had its mortal wound at the Marne; the
Germany we fight to-day is the Germany of Krupp and Ostwald. It is