Raemaekers is, here, having the President say:
"When Germany is defeated, and peace can be discussed, we shall pay the
full price of peace,—namely, justice for all the nations."
We know what justice will be for the nations spoiled. But what will
be justice for the spoiler? We know what this latter would be to an individual;
and a nation is only a greater individual, capable of greater mischief,
subject to greater punishment.
An individual, who, with progressive malice, had broken all the laws of his country, society and God, from simple lying, through perjury, robbery, piracy, up to wholesale murder, would be destroyed—for the good of his fellowmen and as a warning to others. If he should escape the noose the quieter but no less inevitable force of public morality would destroy him. Neither man nor nation has ever long lived by force, flaunting his crimes in the face of the world, committing, threatening yet others. Nor will Germany. She is now, I believe, in the way of destruction, either by the public executioner, or, more likely, by the slower, but not less certain, process of isolation and decay.
She has unmasked herself and we now see the hideous, distorted face of her. How can so monstrous a Thing have friends after this? Who will trade with her? Who will ever again accept a promise of hers? Who but must be ashamed of her name and her language? Anathema she will be to all peoples—the outcast of nations—living for and upon herself, where her life-doctrine of force must inevitably turn to her own destruction. This has been the fate of every world-conqueror and his nation. And, surely, none of them all has so richly deserved it as this intolerable Germany. Ask History! And, yet, to the individual, there is always left repentance and restoration—even though he, himself, must be destroyed.
So, if this besotted Germany had but the courage and virtue to lay down her arms and retire behind her own borders, she could have the peace she pretends to wish for in twenty-four hours—for so little and simple and right a thing as that!
I think, indeed, that the nations she has so wantonly spoiled would permit her to go without further punishment at their hands, leaving that to the very God she has so vilely exploited as her partner in her monstrous crimes. I think they would accept back the goods which she has stolen, damaged as they are, beyond redemption, glad to be rid of her and her debasing contact. But she is mad. Germany is quite mad. She would laugh, like a blood-smeared, amuck-running lunatic at any such proposition. Whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad. The madness is accomplished. I believe that it will be for the peace of the world that the rest shall be.
JOHN LUTHER LONG.
