England does not want a France whose military fist, unobstructed
by the rest of Europe, can undertake a policy which, one way or
another, must one day cross English interests. England can never
desire a France which, in possession of the immense Western
European iron and coal deposits, obtains the foundations of a
menacing economic world position. And England, furthermore, cannot
desire a France whose continental political situation, thanks to
the shattering of the rest of Europe, seems so assured that the
resumption of a French world policy along broader lines is not only
made possible but positively forced. The Zeppelin bombs of former
times might multiply a thousandfold every night; the military
preponderance of France presses heavy on the heart of Great
Britain's world empire.
And Italy, too, cannot and will not desire a further reinforcement
of the French position of superior power in Europe. Italy's future
will always be conditioned by a development which is geographically
grouped around the Mediterranean basin. What drove Italy into the
war was really not the desire to aggrandize France, but the desire
to give the hated Adriatic rival the death blow. Any further
continental strengthening of France, however, is an obstacle to
Italy in the future, and we must not delude ourselves that
relations of parentage among nations can in any way exclude
rivalries.
On soberest and coldest reflection, it is today primarily these two
states, England and Italy, whose most natural selfish interests are
not, in the most essential points at least, opposed to the German
nation's requirements for existence, and are, indeed, to a certain
extent, identified with them.
*...............*...............*
We must, to be sure, in judging such a possibility of alliance, not
overlook three factors. The first depends on us, the two others on
the states in question.
Can any nation ally itself with the present-day Germany? Can a
power which seeks in an alliance an aid for carrying out offensive
aims of its own, ally itself with a state whose leaders for years
have offered a picture of the most wretched incompetence, of
pacifistic cowardice, and the greater part of whose population, in
democratic-Marxist blindness, betray the interests of their own
nation and country in a way that cries to high Heaven? Can any
power hope today to create a valuable relation with a state, in the
hope of some day fighting in common for common interests, when this
country obviously possesses neither the courage nor the desire to
stir so much as a finger in defense of its own bare existence? Will
any power, for which an alliance is and should be more than a
treaty for the guaranty and maintenance of a state of slow
putrefaction like the old Triple Alliance, obligate itself for weal
or woe to a state whose characteristic way of life consists only in
cringing submissiveness without and disgraceful oppression of
national virtues within; with a state that no longer possesses any
greatness, since on the basis of its whole behavior it no longer
deserves it; with governments which can boast of no respect
whatsoever on the part of their citizens, so that foreign countries
cannot possibly harbor any greater admiration for them?