om these considerations. It is improbable that there
will be any such revolution as overthrew French Imperialism in 1871; the
new Prussian Imperialism is closer to the tradition of the people and
much more firmly established through the educational propaganda of the
past half-century. But liberal forces in Germany may nevertheless be
strong enough to force a peace upon the Hohenzollern empire so soon as
any hopes of aggressive successes die away, before the utmost stage of
exhaustion is reached, early in 1917, perhaps, or at latest in 1918.
This, we suppose, will be a restrictive peace so far as Germany is
concerned, humiliating her and hampering her development. The German
Press will talk freely of a _revanche_ and the renewal of the struggle,
and this will help to consolidate the Pledged Allies in their resolve to
hold Germany on every front and to retard her economic and financial
recovery. The dynasty will lose prestige gradually, the true story of
the war will creep slowly into the German consciousness, and the idea of
a middle-class republic, like the French Republic, only defensively
militant and essentially pacific and industrial, will become more and
more popular in the country.

This will have the support of strong journalists, journalists of the
Harden type for example. The dynasty tends to become degenerate, so that
the probability of either some gross scandals or an ill-advised
reactionary movement back to absolutism may develop a crisis within a
few years of the peace settlement. The mercantile and professional
classes will join hands with the social democrats to remove the decaying
incubus of the Hohenzollern system, and Germany will become a more
modern and larger repetition of the Third French republic. This collapse
of the Germanic monarchical system may spread considerably beyond the
limits of the German empire. It will probably be effected without much
violence as a consequence of the convergence and maturity of many
streams of very obvious thought. Many of the monarchs concerned may find
themselves still left with their titles, palaces, and personal estates,
and merely deprived of their last vestiges of legal power. The way will
thus be opened for a gradual renewal of good feeling between the people
of Germany and the western Europeans. This renewal will be greatly
facilitated by the inevitable fall in the German birth-rate that the
shortage and economies of this war will have done much to promote, a