Yet there is no escape for us; if we are to avoid chaos, if the daily life of the world is to be re-established and carried on, there must be an understanding between nations, and there is no possible way to come to an understanding save by the action and words of representative men on the one side and the other.  Such representative men there are; there is no reason to doubt that they do in the main truly express the aspirations and wishes of their people, and on both sides they have either explicitly or virtually made offers.  The offer of the Allied Powers is on record.  What does Germany offer?  She has refused to make a definite statement, but her rulers have talked a great deal, and what she intends is not really in doubt; only she is not sure whether she can get it, and still clings to the hope that a favourable turn of events may relieve her of the duty of making proposals, and put her in a position to dictate a settlement.  We all know what that settlement would be.

The German offer for a solution of the problem of world-government is German sentiments, German racial pride, German manners and customs, an immense increase of German territory and German influence, and above all an acknowledged supremacy for the German race among the nations of the world.  She thinks she has not stated these aims in so many words; but she has.  When it was suggested that the future peace of the world might be assured by the formation of a League to Enforce Peace, Germany, through her official spokesmen, expressed her sympathy with that idea, and stated that she would very gladly put herself at the head of such a League.  I can hardly help loving the Germans when their rustic simplicity and rustic cunning lead them all unconsciously into self-revelation.  The very idea of a League to Enforce Peace implies equality among the contracting parties; and Germany does not understand equality.  ‘By all means’, she says,’let us sit at a round table, and I will sit at the top of it.’  Her panacea for human ills is Germanism.  She has nothing to offer but a purely national sentiment, which some, greatly privileged, may share, and the rest must revere and bow to.  In the Book of Genesis we are told how Joseph was thrown into a pit by his elder brothers for talking just like this; but he meant it quite innocently, and so do the Germans.  They do not intend irreverence to God when they call Him the good German God.  On the contrary, they choose for His praise a word that to them stands for all goodness and all greatness.  Their worship expresses itself naturally in the tribal ritual and the tribal creed.  This tribal creed, there can be no doubt, is what they offer us for a talisman to ensure the right ordering of the world.