Page:The Myth of a Guilty Nation.djvu/20

 German people's sense of justice. Their mistake—it was also Mr. Wilson's great mistake—was in their disregard of what Bismarck called the imponderabilia. The terms of the peace treaty plainly reflect this mistake. That is largely the reason why the treaty is to-day inoperative and worthless. That is largely why the Governments of Europe are confronted with the inescapable alternative: they can either tear up the treaty and replace it by an understanding based on justice, or they can stick to the treaty and by so doing protract indefinitely the dismal succession of wars, revolutions, bankruptcies and commercial dislocations that the treaty inaugurated.

That is the situation; and it is a situation in which the people of the United States have an interest to preserve—the primary interest of a creditor, and also the interest of a trader who needs a large and stable market. It is idle to suppose that American business can prosper so long as Europe remains in a condition of instability and insolvency. Our business is adjusted to the scale of a solvent Europe, and it can not be readjusted without irreparable damage. Until certain matters connected with the war are resolutely put under review, Europe can not be [14]