German military activity, it is universally agreed, must be brought to an
end; Germany will have no further need of a military system save on the
most modest scale. Germany must also be deprived of any colonial empire
and shut out from eastward expansion. That being the case, Germany no
longer needs a fleet, and must be brought back to Bismarck's naval
attitude. Moreover, the industrial activities of Germany must also be
destroyed; the Allied opponents of Germany will henceforth manufacture
for themselves or for one another the goods they have hitherto been so
foolish as to obtain from Germany, and though this may mean cutting
themselves aloof from the country which has hitherto been their own best
customer, that is a sacrifice to be cheerfully borne for the sake of
principle. It is further argued that the world has no need of German
activities in science; they are, it appears, much less valuable than we
had been led to believe, and in any case no self-respecting people would
encourage a science tainted by Kultur. The puzzled reader of these
arguments, overlooking the fallacies they contain, may perhaps sometimes
be tempted to ask: But what are Germans to be allowed to do? The implied
answer is clear: Nothing.

The writers who urge these arguments with such conviction may be
supposed to have an elementary knowledge of the history of the
Germans. We are concerned, that is to say, with a people which has
displayed an irrepressible energy, in one field or another, ever since
the time, more than fifteen hundred years ago, when it excited the
horror of the civilised world by sacking Rome. The same energy was
manifested, a thousand years later, when the Germans again knocked at
the door of Rome and drew away half the world from its allegiance to
the Church. Still more recently, in yet other fields of industry and
commerce and colonisation, these same Germans have displayed their
energy by entering into more or less successful competition with that