whether the course proposed will in fact best attain our
agreed objective, continued peace.
 
 
 If I thought that the Treasury proposals would
accomplish that objective, I would not persist in my
objections. But I cannot believe that they will make
for a lasting peace. In spirit and in emphasis they
are punitive, not, in my judgment, corrective or
constructive. They will tend through bitterness and
suffering to breed another war, not to make another
war undesired by the Germans nor impossible in fact.
It is not within the realm of possibility that a whole
nation of seventy million people, who have been out-
standing for many years in the arts and the sciences and
who through their efficiency and energy have attained
one of the highest industrial levels in Europe, can
by force be required to abandon all their previous
methods of life, be reduced to a peasant level with
virtually complete control of industry and science
left to other peoples.
 
 
 The question is not whether we want Germans
to suffer for their sins. Many of us would like to see
them suffer the tortures they have inflicted on others.
The only question is whether-over the years a group of