* * * * *

It has always been the German policy to bully and to cajole almost at
the same time. But the image of Germania offering, with her sweetest
humanitarian smile, an olive-branch to the Allies whilst her
executioners are starving thousands of Belgian slaves and clubbing them
with their rifles, will stand in the memory of mankind as the climax of
combined brutality and hypocrisy.

Should we wonder if the present has been refused? There is only one
peace which matters, it is the peace of man with his own conscience, the
peace of the soul with its God. We have it already, and even the roar of
the German guns will not disturb it. It hovers over our trenches, over
the sea, even over these terrible German camps where the best blood of a
great people is being sucked by the vampires of War. And those who have
fallen stricken on the battlefields, those who have succumbed to the
slow tortures to which they were subjected, are resting now under its
great wings. Should we dare to disturb their sleep? Should we dare to
stain their glory?

It is not for Germany to offer peace. She has lost, it with her honour.
It lies in some pool, at the corner of a wood, where the hooligan waits
in ambush, or on the rubbish heap of the Soltau camp in which men--noble
men--are made to seek their food like pigs. Germany cannot offer what is
not hers to offer. The Allies cannot take what they have already. For
there is only one peace, "the peace that passeth all understanding."

As for the German olive branch, how could we accept it? It is no longer
green. There is a drop of blood on every leaf.