Looking back upon the years after the war, one sees that the idealism,
which for a little while might have changed the face of the world if
there had been great and noble leadership, fell with a crash in many
hearts because the interpreters of the Peace Treaty were appealing
not to the highest but to the lowest instincts of humanity; to greed
rather than justice; to vengeance rather than reconstruction; to lies
rather than truth. If only there had been one great leader in the world
who had cried: “We were all involved in this crime against humanity,
although Germany’s guilt was greatest; let us in the hour of victory
put vengeance on one side and so shape the peace that the common folk
of the world will have a better chance of life,” I believe that in the
time when the agony was great and the wounds were still bleeding the
hearts of people would have leapt up to him. They would have responded
if he had pleaded for generosity to the defeated nations, if he had
refused to punish the innocent for the guilty, if he had asked them to
forego the pound of flesh demanded in the name of Justice, to forget
the horror of the past, to escape from it together, to march forward to
a new chapter of civilisation not based on standing armies, balances of
powers, and cut-throat rivalry, but upon new ideals of international
law, business, common sense, and Christian ethics.
People will say—do say—“It would have been weakness to let the Germans
off. They deserved to be punished. They would have made a peace of
terror, if they had had the chance of victory. There is Justice to be
considered. Justice demands its due, or God is mocked.”
That is all true. It would have been weakness to let the Germans off,
but the surrender of their Fleet, the destruction of their Army, the
enormous sum of their dead was not a “let off.” They were broken
and punished, in pride and in soul. They would have made a peace of
terror? Yes, that is certain, and they would have aroused, intensified
and perpetuated a world of hate by which later they would have been
destroyed. Their war lords would have made a worse peace than this of
ours; but that is no argument why we should have imitated their methods
and morals.