Chapter XV

The Right To Self-Defence

AFTER WE HAD LAID DOWN ARMS, IN NOVEMBER 1918, A POLICY WAS ADOPTED which in all human probability was bound to lead gradually to our complete subjugation. Analogous examples from history show that those nations which lay down their arms without being absolutely forced to do so subsequently prefer to submit to the greatest humiliations and exactions rather than try to change their fate by resorting to arms again.

That is intelligible on purely human grounds. A shrewd conqueror will always enforce his exactions on the conquered only by stages, as far as that is possible. Then he may expect that a people who have lost all strength of character--which is always the case with every nation that voluntarily submits to the threats of an opponent--will not find in any of these acts of oppression, if one be enforced apart from the other, sufficient grounds for taking up arms again. The more numerous the extortions thus passively accepted so much the less will resistance appear justified in the eyes of other people, if the vanquished nation should end by revolting