he future, European



history is to be a perpetual prize-fight, of which France has won


this round, but of which this round is certainly not the last.



From the belief that essentially the old order does not change,


being based on human nature which is always the same, and from a



consequent scepticism of all that class of doctrine which the


League of Nations stands for, the policy of France and of



Clemenceau followed logically. For a peace of magnanimity or of


fair and equal treatment, based on such 'ideology' as the



Fourteen Points of the President, could only have the effect of


shortening the interval of Germany's recovery and hastening the



day when she will once again hurl at France her greater numbers


and her superior resources and technical skill. Hence the



necessity of 'guarantees'; and each guarantee that was taken, by


increasing irritation and thus the probability of a subsequent



revanche by Germany, made necessary yet further provisions to


crush. Thus, as soon as this view of the world is adopted and the



other discarded, a demand for a Carthaginian peace is inevitable,


to the full extent of the momentary power to impose it. For



Clemenceau made no pretence of considering himself bound by the


Fourteen Points and left chiefly to others such concoctions as



were necessary from time to time to save the scruples or the face


of the President.



So far as possible, therefore, it was the policy of France to


set the clock back and to undo what, since 1870, the progress of



Germany had accomplished. By loss of territory and other measures


her population was to be curtailed; but chiefly the economic



system, upon which she depended for her new strength, the vast


fabric built upon iron, coal, and transport, must be destroyed.



If France could seize, even in part, what Germany was compelled


to drop, the inequality of strength between the two rivals for



European hegemony f lip service to the 'ideals' of foolish Americans and


hypocritical Englishmen; but it would be stupid to believe that



there is much room in the world, as it really is, for such


affairs as the League of Nations, or any sense in the principle



of self-determination except as an ingeniousformula for


rearranging the balance of power in one's own interests.



These, however, are generalities. In tracing the practical


details of the peace which he thought necessary for the power and



the security of France, we must go back to the historical causes


which had operated during his lifetime. Before the Franco-German



war the populations of France and Germany were approximately


equal; but the coal and iron and shipping of Germany were in



their infancy, and the wealth of France was greatly superior.


Even after the loss of Alsace-Lorraine there was no great



discrepancy between the real resources of the two countries. But


in the intervening period the relative position had changed



completely. By 1914 the population of Germany was nearly seventy


per cent in excess of that of France; she had become one of the



first manufacturing and trading nations of the world; her


technical skill and her means for the production of future wealth



were unequalled. France on the other hand had a stationary or


declining population, and, relatively to others, had fallen



seriously behind in wealth and in the power to produce it.


In spite, therefore, of France's victorious issue from the



present struggle (with the aid, this time, of England and


America), her future position remained precarious in the eyes of



one who took the view that European civil war is to be regarded


as a normal, or at least a recurrent, state of affairs for the



future, and that the sort of conflicts between organised Great


Powers which have occupied the past hundred years will also



engage the next. According to this vision of te good people of
Rotterdam. Around it, neatly arranged like the blue jars in

an old-fashioned apothecary shop, hung the little fellows, who
twice each week played a merry tune for the benefit of the

country-folk who had come to market to buy and sell and hear
what the big world had been doing. But in a corner--all alone

and shunned by the others--a big black bell, silent and stern,
the bell of death.

Then darkness once more and other ladders, steeper and
even more dangerous than those we had climbed before, and

suddenly the fresh air of the wide heavens. We had reached
the highest gallery. Above us the sky. Below us the city--

a little toy-town, where busy ants were hastily crawling hither
and thither, each one intent upon his or her particular business,

and beyond the jumble of stones, the wide greenness of the
open country.

It was my first glimpse of the big world.
Since then, whenever I have had the opportunity, I have

gone to the top of the tower and enjoyed myself. It was hard
work, but it repaid in full the mere physicalexertion of climbing

a few stairs.
Besides, I knew what my reward would be. I would see the

land and the sky, and I would listen to the stories of my kind
friend the watchman, who lived in a small shack, built in a

sheltered corner of the gallery. He looked after the clock
and was a father to the bells, and he warned of fires, but he

enjoyed many free hours and then he smoked a pipe and
thought his own peaceful thoughts. He had gone to school almost

fifty years before and he had rarely read a book, but he
had lived on the top of his tower for so many years that he had

absorbed the wisdom of that wide world which surrounded him
on all sides.

History he knew well, for it was a living thing with him.
``There,'' he would say, pointing to a bend of the river, ``there,

my boy, do you see those trees? That is where the Prince of
Orange cut the dikes to drown the land and save Leyden.''

Or he would tell me the tale of the old Meuse, until the broad
river ceased to be a convenient harbour and became a wonderful

highroad, carrying the ships of De Ruyter and Tromp upon
that famous last voyage, when they gave their lives that the

sea might be free to all.
Then there were the little villages, clustering around the

protecting church which once, many years ago, had been the
home of their Patron Saints. In the distance we could see the

leaning tower of Delft. Within sight of its high arches,
William the Silent had been murdered and there Grotius had

learned to construe his first Latin sentences. And still further
away, the long low body of the church of Gouda, the early home

of the man whose wit had proved mightier than the armies of
many an emperor, the charity-boy whom the world came to

know as Erasmus.
Finally the silver line of the endless sea and as a contrast,

immediately below us, the patchwork of roofs and chimneys
and houses and gardens and hospitals and schools and railways,