e: "We are going to
disarm, and so are you, whether you want to or not." As to the procedure
of disarmament--whether it shall be slow or fast, whether it shall
include destruction or be content with mere omission to renew, how the
proportions shall be decided, who shall give the signal to begin--here
are matters which I am without skill or desire to discuss. All I know
about them is that they are horribly complicated, unprecedentedly
difficult, and bursting with danger; and that they will strain the
wisdom, patience, and ingenuity of the negotiators to the very utmost.

*Three Vital Points.*

Compared to disarmament, all remaining questions whatsoever affecting
peace are simple and secondary. Indemnities for France or Russia, or
both, a Polish Kingdom, a Balkan United States, the precise number of
nations into which Austria-Hungary is to be shattered, the ownership of
the east coast of the Adriatic, even the reparation of the infamy by
which Denmark was robbed of Schleswig-Holstein--what are these but
favorable ground for the art of compromise? The vital points, at any
rate for us Westerners, are only three: Belgium, Alsace-Lorraine, and
disarmament. * * * Stay, there is another. It is vital to Great
Britain's reputation that she should accept nothing--neither indemnity,
nor colonies; not a single pound, not a single square mile.

Many persons, I gather, find it hard to believe that Prussia will ever
admit that she is beaten or consent to her own humiliation. Naturally
her conduct will depend upon the degree to which she is beaten. She has
admitted defeat and swallowed the leek before, though it is a long time
ago. Meanwhile she has forgotten, and her opponents seem to have
forgotten also, that though her name is Prussia she is subject to the
limitations of the human race. Out of her prodigious score off little
Denmark, her thrashing of Austria--a country which never wins a war--and
her victory over France, there grew a legend that Prussia, and therefore
Germany, was not as other nations. This legend is contrary to fact.
Every nation must yield to force--here, indeed, is Germany's
contribution to our common knowledge.

If in July, 1870, it had been prophesied that France would give up
Alsace-Lorraine and pay two hundred millions to get rid of a foreign
army of occupation, France would have protested that she would fight to
the last man and to the last franc first. But nations don't do these
things. If Germany won