Page:Gilbert Keith Chesterton - How to Help Annexation (1918).djvu/3

Rh still remain to attest to the wise limitation laid by the victors on themselves. In short, it is an admitted fact of history that the Germans in 1871 bestowed upon France every one of the benefits and concessions which (according to the peace proposal now before us) they would bestow upon Belgium or the Balkans.

Those, therefore, who hold the historical thesis that Germany suffered defeat and a diminishment of power in 1870, will naturally accept the view now offered to us that the present punishment of Germany has been enough. They will naturally believe that a Germany evacuating Belgium will be a Germany as chastened, sobered and reminded of her own weakness as was the army of Moltke when it marched out of France. But those who do not think that a repetition of 1870 can be regarded merely as a lesson to the Germans, will be equally logical if they draw the opposite deduction. If Germany was in any way triumphant or exuberant after emerging undamaged from that short but dangerous adventure, it is obvious that she will be more triumphant and more exuberant after emerging from this much longer and more dangerous one. Any seeds of anything suggestive of self-satisfaction that could be detected in the German Empire for the last forty years must necessarily shoot and blossom in a more fragrant and flowery manner; any faint hints of racial ambition which anyone may have heard whispered in Germany, having been fully justified, will be plainly expressed. Any counteracting Teutonic elements of self-distrust or self-depreciation will naturally be overbalanced;