ed to him perfectly reasonable, was that Germany is willing
to bargain about Belgium, and to relax her hold, in exchange for solid
advantages elsewhere. Perhaps he knew that if the Allies were to spend
five minutes in bargaining about Belgium they would thereby condone the
German crime and would lose all that they have fought for. But it seems
more likely that he did not know it. The Allies know it.

There is hope in these clear-cut issues. Of all wars that ever were
fought this war is least likely to have an indecisive ending. It must be
settled one way or the other. If the Allied Governments were to make
peace to-day, there would be no peace; the peoples of the free countries
would not suffer it. Germany cannot make peace, for she is bound by
heavy promises to her people, and she cannot deliver the goods. She is
tied to the stake, and must fight the course. Emaciated, exhausted,
repeating, as if in a bad dream, the old boastful appeals to military
glory, she must go on till she drops, and then at last there will be
peace.

These may themselves seem boastful words; they cannot be proved except
by the event. There are some few Englishmen, with no stomach for a
fight, who think that England is in a bad way because she is engaged in
a war of which the end is not demonstrably certain. If the issues of
wars were known beforehand, and could be discounted, there would be no
wars. Good wars are fought by nations who make their choice, and would
rather die than lose what they are fighting for. Military fortunes are
notoriously variable, and depend on a hundred accidents. Moral causes
are constant, and operate all the time. The chief of these moral causes
is the character of a people. Germany, by her vaunted study of the art
and science of war, has got herself into a position where no success can
come to her except by way of the collapse or failure of the
English-speaking peoples. A study of the moral causes, if she were
capable of making it, would not encourage her in her old impious belief
that God will destroy these peoples in order to clear the way for the
dominion of the Hohenzollerns.

MIGHT IS RIGHT

_First published as one of the Oxford Pamphlets, October 1914_

It is now recognized in England that our enemy in this war is not a
tyrant military caste, but the united people of modern Germany. We have
to combat an armed doctrine which is virtually the creed of all Germany.
Saxony and Bavaria, it is true, would