28

ESSAYS IN PERSUASION

PART

surely absolutely free from the objections ofa privileged and avowedly imperialistic schemeof exclusion and discrimination. Our attitudeto these criticisms must be determined by ourwhole moral and emotional reaction to thefuture of international relations and the Peaceof the World. If we take the view that forat least a generation to come Germany cannotbe trusted with even a modicum of prosper-ity, that while all our recent Allies are angelsof light, all our recent enemies, Germans ,Austrians, Hungarians , and the rest, are chil-dren of the devil, that year by year Germany must be kept impoverished and her childrenstarved and crippled, and that she must beringed round by enemies; then we shall rejectall the proposals of this chapter, and particu-larly those which may assist Germany to re-gain a part of her former material prosperityand find a means of livelihood for the industrialpopulation of her towns. But if this view ofnations and of their relation to one another isadopted by the democracies of Western Europe ,and is financed by the United States , heavenhelp us all. If we aim deliberately at theimpoverishment of Central Europe , vengeance,I dare predict, will not limp. Nothing canthen delay for very long that final civil warbetween the forces of Reaction and the de-spairing convulsions of Revolution, beforewhich the horrors of the late German war willfade into nothing, and which will destroy,whoever is victor, the civilisation and the pro-