Page:The Destruction of Poland - Toynbee - 1916.djvu/36

 about in the yard. With joy radiant in his face and eyes, he was carrying the basket out of the yard gate, when he was spied by the watchman. There was a short, brutal struggle, and the watchman had snatched away the pitiful booty, while a group of ragged women and children were fighting to secure the shavings which fell out of the basket into the mud"

It would be monotonous to multiply the description of such scenes—and indeed no purpose would be served by quoting more; for we have found a conclusive answer to the question with which we set out: We questioned Germany's programme for a European settlement, and undertook to examine, from the Polish evidence in hand, what the consequences would actually be if Germany really succeeded in annexing the borderlands in East and West and imposing her military supremacy upon the other nations of continental Europe. The present fate of Poland foreshadows with inexorable clearness the fate that such a settlement would bring upon us all. Germany is not proving herself the appointed saviour of the modern world. She has degenerated into a vampire-state, that sucks the life-blood of any nation that falls into her grip. The triumph of German "organisation" would not bring the millennium; it would bring darkness and the shadow of death.

LONDON: JAS. TRUSCOTT & SON,.