THE HOUR OF DESTINY


1

We are already free to speak of this war as if it were ended and of
victory as if it were assured. In principle, in the region of moral
certainties, Germany has been beaten since the battle of the Marne;
and reality, which is always slower, because it goes burdened beneath
the weight of matter, must needs come obediently to join the ranks of
those certainties. The last agony may be prolonged for weeks and
months, for the animal is endowed with the stubborn and almost
inextinguishable vitality of the beasts of prey; but it is wounded to
the death; and we have only to wait patiently, weapon in hand, for the
final convulsions that announce the end. The historic event, the
greatest beyond doubt since man possessed a history, is therefore
accomplished; and, strange to say, it seems as though it had been
accomplished in spite of history, against its laws and contrary to its
wishes. It is rash, I know, to speak of such things; and it behoves us
to be very cautious in these speculations which pass the scope of
human understanding; but, when we consider what the annals of this
earth of ours have taught us, it seemed written in the book of the
world's destinies that Germany was bound to win. It was not only, as
we are too ready at the first glance to believe, the megalomania of an
autocrat drunk with vanity, the gross vanity of some brainless
buffoon; it was not the warlike impulses, the blind infatuation and
egoism of a feudal caste; it was not even the impatient and
deliberately fanned envy and covetousness of a too prolific race
close-cramped on a dreary and ungrateful soil: it was none of these