In the summer of 1914 Germany stood before the world, a nation of
immense, and to a great extent of most honourable, achievement. Her
military greatness had never been in dispute. But in the previous
twenty years she had developed an internal industry and an external
commerce on a scale and with a rapidity entirely unprecedented. She had
to build a navy such as no nation had ever constructed in so short a
time. She seemed destined to progress in the immediate future as she
had progressed in the immediate past.
What has the madness for world conquest done for her now? She has made
enemies of all, and made all her enemies suffer. Like the strong blind
man of history, she has seized the columns of civilisation and brought
the whole temple down. But has she not destroyed herself utterly amid
the ruins? Her industry is paralysed, her commerce gone. Her navy is
dishonoured. Some force she still possesses at sea, but it is force to
be expended on sea piracy alone. And it is not piracy that can save
her. At most, in her extremity, it will do for her what a life belt
does for a lone figure in a deserted ocean. It prolongs the agony
that precedes inevitable extinction. It is the throw of the desperate
gambler that Germany has made, when she flings this last vestige of her
honour into the sea.