Assisted by the generosity of the doomed Austrians and Turks, the
Germans are fighting now to secure a voice as large as possible in the
final settlement, and it is conceivable that in the end that settlement
may be made quite an attractive one for Germany proper by the crowning
sacrifice of suicide on the part of her two subordinated allies.

There can be little doubt that Russia will gain the enormous advantage
of a free opening into the Mediterranean and that the battle of the
Marne turned the fortunes of France from disaster to expansion. But the
rest of the settlement is still vague and uncertain, and German
imperialism, at least, is already working hard and intelligently for a
favorable situation at the climax, a situation that will enable this
militarist empire to emerge still strong, still capable of recuperation
and of a renewal at no very remote date of the struggle for European
predominance. This is a thing as little for the good of the saner German
people as it is for the rest of the world, but it is the only way in
which militant imperialism can survive at all.

The alternative of an imperialism shorn of the glamour of aggression,
becoming constitutional and democratic--the alternative, that is to say,
of a great liberal Germany--is one that will be as distasteful almost to
the people who control the destinies of Germany today, and who will
speak and act for Germany in the final settlement, as a complete
submission to a Serbian conqueror would be.

At the final conference of settlement Germany will not be really
represented at all. The Prussian militarist empire will still be in
existence, and it will sit at the council, working primarily for its own
survival. Unless the Allies insist upon the presence of representatives
of Saxony, Bavaria, and so forth, and demand the evidence of popular