The Reckoning
engages the whole country in its acts: is responsible for a war, for oppression. How shall we treat that nation? Single out the militarists and pacifists? Go into the workings of it, separate out the constituent elements? You cannot. Every member of that country is a member of the team, must take the good with the bad, must pay the debts contracted by the government. It cannot be a nation otherwise.
This from your point of view. And from the point of view of the workings of justice it happens to be no less defensible. When the whole of a nation reaps reward or punishment, a rough general justice is executed. If it is only the will of a minority which has brought on catastrophe, and the majority must pay, then it pays for having suffered the will of the minority. Had the German masses foreseen defeat and its consequences, Germany would never have gone to war, militarist minority or none. The masses which obeyed their masters, readily or sullenly, must pay for the obedience which gave their mas-
125
