Germany--a futile desire, even if not wicked--but its regeneration. No
doubt for a time, whatever happens in Germany, it will be impossible to
forget the crimes that have been committed. British sailors will
naturally refuse all association with those who have been guilty of the
series of murders at sea. Any attempt, however, to exclude Germany from
the markets of the world, permanently to destroy German commerce for all
time, would make permanent peace impossible. To make that a war aim
would be to strengthen every evil influence in Germany, and if done with
the object of securing gain to ourselves by forcible means, would
degrade us almost to the level of those who forced this War upon the
world. It was the purity of our aims that united all the best elements
of the nation in entering upon and in prosecuting the War, and in facing
its losses. It was that which has confirmed the stability of the
alliance, and from the beginning of the War made the best and most
enlightened Americans earnest supporters of our cause, and has finally
brought in the whole American nation, sworn to see the accomplishment of
those aims. The aims with which Britain entered on the War appealed
irresistibly to the people of the whole Empire, and not least to the
imagination of the Indian races. An Indian friend of wide experience and
calm and independent judgment wrote to me at the time, saying he had
never seen anything like the spirit of intense loyalty called out by the
belief of Indians that Britain was taking up a heavy burden to protect
weaker nations from aggression and to maintain justice.[4] Let us keep
those aims pure to the end. It would, of course, be affectation to
suggest that our object in the War is now simply a chivalrous desire to
protect the weak or maintain justice. We now know that it is also to
preserve our own existence as a nation, and that it would be better for
us and our children that Britain should be sunk beneath the sea than
that Germany should achieve a complete victory.