Life — November 26, 1914 — page 19: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

France 4,000,000 He has said that if he had been Sir Edward Grey he would have managed quite differently and would probably have averted war altogether; also that next to the German Junkers the British Junkers are the worst Junkers in the world, and that this is a Junker war. No doubt that is true enough. The British own the earth and the Germans want it. There is no great moral ob- jection to Germans taking the earth away from the British if they can. As between British and Germans a real neutral—the Almighty, for ex- ample—might look on quite dispas- sionately. It's no wickeder for the Germans to wish to be boss ashore than for the British to wish to rule the wave. We get from both nations the expression of the will to power. Nevertheless, there is good reason for us, and most other nations, to favor the British and not the Germans. If even the Germans possessed the earth they would be obliged, in the end, to satisfy it, or they could not hold it. But they don’t seem to know how. They cannot satisfy any people except Germans, They might learn how in time, possibly, but a great many Great Britain 1,200,000 730,000 sore heads and sore hearts would be the price of their instruction. But the British, after several hun- dred years of practice and much pain- ful experience in satisfying other peo- ples, have come to be remarkably pro- ficient in it, Their great empire seems to hold together for the mutual con- venience of its members. England is already the nucleus of a great world confederation of fairly well satisfied, largely self-governing peoples, who act together for mutual convenience. There is vastly better prospect of sat- isfaction and the maintenance of peace in co-operating with that existing con- federation than in breaking it all up and starting another with headquarters in Berlin, Moreover, though there are Brit- ish Junkers, as there are German Junkers, the British Junker is a very much chastened man. Ideas have pene- trated his consciousness to which the German Junker’s mind is a complete stranger. Read in “Guy Livingstone” of Ralph Mohun’s fight with the wild Irish. Other days, other customs! What English were in Ireland, Ger- mans might still be somewhere else. “Me, too!” So a Belgium 222,000 85,000 What England has done in Ireland in the last generation, and even in the last year, is very valuable to her now. It helps to fill in her certificate of regeneration, the more so as it was not a war measure, but the slow-ripen- ing fruit of a progressive public sen- and a super-dreadnought is a super-nuisance. These infernal craft cost too much. The more dread- noughts the world doesn’t have, the richer it is. Nevertheless, the loss of that one— the Audacious—which hit a mine north of Ireland, might well have been post- poned until the proceedings now going on to put human affairs on a new basis are completed. That the men were taken off is a consolation. A great price is being paid for something in this war. That will in- tensify the demand that finally the goods shall be delivered, comicbooks.com United States