Restoration is easy, if one only has the power and the will; creation is not easy, even if one has both. Restoration is reversion to the known, the certain; creation is a venture into the unknown and the uncertain, and is highly conducive to divergencies of thought, to division in the ranks; while an army of restoration knows precisely what it wishes to do, namely, to set up again the old landmarks—and that, too, as speedily as possible—to bring back the good old times, to renew the broken connection with the past. Whether we like it or not, ours is the more difficult task. If the five Great Powers of 1919 were anxious to restore the map of 1914, they could not do it; whereas the five Great Powers of 1814 found it easy to reverse the cartographical innovations of Napoleon Bonaparte. The work of Lenin and Trotzky will not be so easily undone. Fortunately for the peace of his spirit, Napoleon does not know that. Napoleon, Lenin, and Trotzky—an incongruous trio of actors on the Russian stage! Napoleon, a Frenchman, bent upon conquering Russia, was the direct means of heightening the influence and increasing the territory of Russia, as all the world saw in 1815. Lenin and Trotzky, Russians, have not only coöperated zealously in destroying the prestige of their country: they have consented and contributed, to the best of their ability, to the colossal dismemberment of Russia and its utter impotence. Russia has become merely a geographical expression, the combined achievement of German militarism and Russian Socialism. There is not Russia. What was once Russia is a disorganized aggregation of local governments, presenting, among other things, a wild tangle of territorial problems—and territorial problems resembling those of primeval chaos, with most landmarks entirely obliterated. The one outstanding landmark in contemporary Russia is that set up on March 3, 1918—the treaty of Brest-Litovsk. That treaty has never been recognized by any of the victorious Allies; nevertheless, it dogs them night and day in the time of triumph, embittering peace, if not preventing it, darkening counsel, and putting a strain upon friendship. The treaty of Brest-Litovsk may be repudiated by the conferees of Paris; it may be dead as far as Germany, its chief author, is concerned; but it is far from being a negligible factor in the history of the present. On the contrary, it, and the things it represents and embodies in its fell phrases, are bound to exercise a profound and disturbing influence upon the future. Where does one find anything in Germany parallel to this inner transformation? The history of Germany during the last forty years, during the last ten years, has shown the contrary phenomenon: a growing and not a decreasing harmony between the governors and the governed. If one wishes to test this statement, let him compare the stand taken by the only so-called opposition party in the war of 1870 and the war of our own day. In the former, the Socialists, who were few in number, were opposed to militarism, to aggrandizement, to the declaration of war, and to the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine, and their leaders, Bebel and Liebknecht, paid for their opposition by being thrown into prison. The Socialists of to-day, vastly more numerous and with far greater powers of opposition, have compromised with militarism, have warmly approved annexations by voting for the treaty of Brest-Litovsk, and have on every and all occasions, in the year of our Lord 1918, joined in the general clamor that Alsace-Lorraine must never be surrendered. It would seem to be the business of an opposition to oppose. Should there emerge from the Assembly of Weimar a German democracy, that democracy will be the expression of German psychology. German psychology caused the war and kept it going. The ruling classes would never have risked the war, had they not known the temper and the nature of the German people. Nothing has yet occurred to show that the great masses of the people differed in 1914 from their rulers, either in their conceptions of the nature and the duty of the state, in their moral indifferentism, or in their arrogance and conceit. The defeat Germany has sustained may abate somewhat her contempt of other nations. It is not likely to diminish her hatred of them. It is far more likely to intensify that hatred. Men do not love their enemies any the more because their enemies have compelled them to bite the dust. What we know about the Germans does not lead up to believe, either that they have changed in essentials, or that they are changing, or that they are likely to change and to give the world the spectacle of the miracle of a new psychology. The majority of the members of the National Assembly of Weimar were members of the Reichstag, and belonged to parties that enthusiastically supported the policies of the Empire.
Explanation: Facts
