untouched by modern influences. It needs no psychological insight to foretell that if the result of this war can be in any way regarded as a success for Germany, she will be thereby confirmed in her present ideals, however great her sufferings may have been, and however complete her exhaustion. It must be remembered that this type of people is capable of interpreting facts in accordance with its prejudices to an almost incredible extent, as we have seen time and again in the course of the war. The proof that the aggressive national type is intolerable in modern Europe, if it can be afforded by force of arms, must therefore be made very plain, or it will have no value as a lesson. Proof of failure adequate to convince a people of the socialized type might be quite inadequate to convince a people of the lupine type in whom, from the nature of the case, mental resistiveness is so much more {199} impenetrable. This is the psychological fact of which the statesmen of Europe will have to be, above all things, aware when questions of peace come seriously to be discussed, for otherwise they will risk the loss of all the blood and treasure which have been expended without any corresponding gain for civilization.
We have been warned that to “humiliate” Germany will merely be to set her upon the preparation of vengeance, and to confirm her belief in the supreme value of military strength. This opinion affects to be based on a knowledge of human nature, but its pretensions are not very well founded. The passion of revenge is habitually over-estimated as a motive—possibly through the influence of the novelists and playwrights to whom it is so useful. When we examine man’s behaviour objectively we find that revenge, however deathless a passion it is vowed to be at emotional moments, is in actual life constantly having to give way to more urgent and more recent needs and feelings. Between nations there is no reason to suppose that it has any more reality as a motive of policy, though it perhaps has slightly more value as a