Raymond E. Swing to Colonel House

New York, With your permission I shall summarize what I said today.
The liberal nmovement in Germany has grown staedily in power. Its chief support, naturally, comes from the socialist parties, but practically the entire Progressive-Popular larty, half of the Centrists and a third of the National Liberals wish moderate peace terms, while even a greater political backing is behind the demand for franchise reform in Prussia and responsible ministry in the Empire.
The greater political ability and more unified organization of the conservatives is responsible for the external view of half-and-half division on these questions.
The German people wish peace at any acceptable price. Scheidermann told me a week before I left Berlin that if the Allies offered a peace which left German territory intact and her commercial growth unhampered, and if, then, the Government should refuse these terms, there would be a revolution in twenty-four hours, “and I should place myself at the head of it”. He has made the same statement in numberless speeches. It is the only basis upon which Germany can continue the war, this belief that the Allies insist on taking German soil and on shackling her commercially.
Should such moderate terms be announced by the Allies I doubt whether the Government would dare refuse. Such leaders as Scheidermann, Naumann, Delbruck, Dernberg, Bernstorff, Erzberger and the minority socialists would be too formidable. The public behind them could not be defied.
It seems to me that the jingoes in Germany are getting too much help from the Allies. All statements about “no peace with the Hohenzollerns” bring the instantaneous reaction, even among backsliders from monarchy, of uniting support for the Emperor. I have witnessed it time and again. I saw the answer of the Allies to President Wilson stop a process of swift disintegration and make grim patriots out of hopeful pacifists.
I doubt not Lord Cecil's recent reply to Bethman Hollweg was worth more to the war party in Germany that the next potato crop. The Germans are taking care of their own domestic affairs; they resent interference, or the threat of it. Such threats can only retard the constitutional reform movement in the Reichstag and delay the fulfilment of the Kaiser's pledge of universal and equal suffrage.
The great thing, of course, would be the announcement of liberal terms by the Allies. A clear and exalted word spoken on this subject, spoken so the whole world would hear, would bring about the almost instantaneous collapse of the war. For it is not British, nor French, nor German jingoism which keeps the war going, it is the belief in each of these countries that liberal terms are impossible. Once let the people know–– how could the war go on?Let me, in closing, speak only one more point. The illusion prevails throughout the allied countries that the Scheidermann group are dupes of the Government and that Scheidermann is Bethmann's alter ego. On the contrary, Scheidermann's strength has forced the Chancellor to appear to be supporting a Scheidermann program. In the meantime the majority socialists have consistently, and with startling success, worked for making the Reichstag a true, popular assembly. These men are for democracy to the death. But they do not believe they must fight for it. “But if we must” Scheidermann told me once, “dont forget the Government has taught millions of men to make and throw hand grenades”.
The old Germany is gone. Delbruch, Treitschke's successor, was the first to announce his conversion to pacifism and to advocate the peace league. I talked with thirty editors in the Empire last fall men of all shades of political thought, and not one dared predict that the next Reichstag would not be overwhelmingly radical. The new Empire is there already, the new Empire of popular rights, it needs only be enacted into law. To say incessantly that these great and genuinely democratic movements are merely tricks of an astute autocracy, subtle deceits, Prussian lies, is to do the cause of democracy in Germany immeasurable harm.
But the German people will never believe in our interest in them so long as the answer of the Allies to President Wilson remains unmodified.I thank you once more for your kindness, and, with all my respects, beg to remain,(Signed) Raymond E Swing.