It
orders its servants to lay aside pity and burn peasants in their homes,
to bayonet women and children, to shoot old men. Of course, there are
exceptions to this. There are Germans of the vintage of '48, and later,
many of them honest and peaceable dwellers in the country which shelters
them. But the imperial system has little use for them. They do not serve
its purpose.
The issue of the war, as Belgium and France see it, is this: Are they to
live or die? Are they to be charted out once again through years till
their hidden weakness is accurately located, and then is an army to be
let loose on them that will visit a universal outrage on their children
and wives? Peace will be intolerable till this menace is removed. The
restoration of territory in Belgium and Northern France and the return
to the _status quo_ before the war, are not sufficient guarantees for
the future. The _status quo_ before the war means another insidious
invasion, carried on unremittingly month by month by business agents,
commercial travelers, genial tourists, and studious gentlemen in villas.
A crippled, broken Teutonic military power is the only guarantee that a
new army of spies will not take the road to Brussels and Paris on the
day that peace is signed. No simple solution like, "Call it all off,
we'll start in fresh; bygones are bygones," meets the real situation.
The Allied nations have been infested with a cloud of witnesses for many
years.
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