compactly and loudly that all Germany will hear and
understand? Why do they justify imperialism to Germany? Why do they
maintain a threatening ambiguity towards Germany on all these matters?

By doing so they leave Germany no choice but a war of desperation. They
underline and endorse the claim of German imperialism that this is a war
for bare existence. They unify the German people. They prolong the war.

Sec. 3

Some weeks later I was able, at the invitation of the editor, to carry
the controversy against imperialism into the _Daily Mail_, which has
hitherto counted as a strictly imperialist paper. The article that
follows was published in the _Daily Mail_ under the heading, "Are we
Sticking to the Point? A Discussion of War Aims."

Has this War-Aims controversy really got down to essentials? Is the
purpose of this world conflict from first to last too complicated for
brevity, or can we boil it down into a statement compact enough for a
newspaper article?

And if we can, why is there all this voluminous, uneasy, unquenchable
disputation about War Aims?

As to the first question, I would say that the gist of the dispute
between the Central Powers and the world can be written easily without
undue cramping in an ordinary handwriting upon a postcard. It is the
second question that needs answering. And the reason why the second
question has to be asked and answered is this, that several of the
Allies, and particularly we British, are not being perfectly plain and
simple-minded in our answer to the first, that there is a division among
us and in our minds, and that our division is making us ambiguous in our
behaviour, that it is weakening and dividing our action and
strengthening and consolidating the enemy, and that unless we can drag
this slurred-over division of aim and spirit into the light of day and
_settle it now_, we are likely to remain double-minded to the end of the
war, to split our strength while the war continues and to come out of
the settlement at the end with nothing nearly worth the strain and
sacrifice it has cost us.

And first, let us deal with that postcard and say what is the essential
aim of the war, the aim to which all other aims are subsidiary. It is,
we have heard repeated again and again by every statesman of importance
in every Allied country, to defeat and destroy military imperialism, to
make the world safe for ever against any such deliberate aggression as
Germany prepared for