But no:
we have no principles left, not even commercial ones; for what sane
commercialist would decree that France must not pay for her failure to
defend her own soil; that Germany must pay for her success in carrying
the war into the enemy's country; and that as Germany has not the money
to pay, and under our commercial system can make it only by becoming
once more a commercial competitor of England and France, which neither
of them will allow, she must borrow the money from England, or America,
or even from France: an arrangement by which the victorious creditors
will pay one another, and wait to get their money back until Germany is
either strong enough to refuse to pay or ruined beyond the possibility
of paying? Meanwhile Russia, reduced to a scrap of fish and a pint of
cabbage soup a day, has fallen into the hands of rulers who perceive
that Materialist Communism is at all events more effective than
Materialist Nihilism, and are attempting to move in an intelligent and
ordered manner, practising a very strenuous Intentional Selection of
workers as fitter to survive than idlers; whilst the Western Powers are
drifting and colliding and running on the rocks, in the hope that if
they continue to do their worst they will get Naturally Selected for
survival without the trouble of thinking about it.
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