THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY _Including Letters to an Old Garibaldian_ _By_ G. K. CHESTERTON CONTENTS CHAPTER THE FACTS OF THE CASE I THE WAR ON THE WORD II THE REFUSAL OF RECIPROCITY III THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY IV THE ESCAPE OF FOLLY LETTERS TO AN OLD GARIBALDIAN THE FACTS OF THE CASE Unless we are all mad, there is at the back of the most bewilderingbusiness a story: and if we are all mad, there is no such thing as madness. If I set a house on fire, it is quite true that I may illuminate many otherpeople's weaknesses as well as my own. It may be that the master of thehouse was burned because he was drunk; it may be that the mistress of thehouse was burned because she was stingy, and perished arguing about theexpense of the fire-escape. It is, nevertheless, broadly true that theyboth were burned because I set fire to their house. That is the story ofthe thing. The mere facts of the story about the present Europeanconflagration are quite as easy to tell. Before we go on to the deeper things which make this war the most sincerewar of human history, it is easy to answer the question of why England cameto be in it at all, as one asks how a man fell down a coal-hole, or failedto keep an appointment. Facts are not the whole truth. But facts are facts, and in this case the facts are few and simple. Prussia, France, andEngland had all promised not to invade Belgium. Prussia proposed to invadeBelgium, because it was the safest way of invading France. But Prussiapromised that if she might break in, through her own broken promise andours, she would break in and not steal. In other words, we were offered atthe same instant a promise of faith in the future and a proposal of perjuryin the present. Those interested in human origin may refer to an oldVictorian writer of English, who, in the last and most restrained of hishistorical essays, wrote of Frederick the Great, the founder of thisunchanging Prussian policy. After describing how Frederick broke theguarantee he had signed on behalf of Maria Theresa, he then describes howFrederick sought to put things straight by a promise that was an insult. "If she would but let him have Silesia, he would, he said, stand by heragainst any power which should try to deprive her of her other dominions, as if he was not already bound to stand by her, or as if his new promisecould be of more value than the old one. " That passage was written byMacaulay, but so far as the mere contemporary facts are concerned, it mighthave been written by me. Upon the immediate logical and legal origin of the English interest therecan be no rational debate. There are some things so simple that one canalmost prove them with plans and diagrams, as in Euclid. One could make akind of comic calendar of what would have happened to the Englishdiplomatist if he had been silenced every time by Prussian diplomacy. Suppose we arrange it in the form of a kind of diary. July 24. Germany invades Belgium. July 25. England declares war. July 26. Germany promises not to annex Belgium. July 27. England withdraws from the war. July 28. Germany annexes Belgium. England declares war. July 29. Germany promises not to annex France. England withdraws from thewar. July 30. Germany annexes France. England declares war. July 31. Germany promises not to annex England. Aug. 1. England withdraws from the war. Germany invades England. .. How long is anybody expected to go with that sort of game, or keep peace atthat illimitable price? How long must we pursue a road in which promisesare all fetishes in front of us and all fragments behind us? No: upon thecold facts of the final negotiations, as told by any of the diplomatists inany of the documents, there is no doubt about the story. And no doubt aboutthe villain of the story. These are the last facts--the facts which involved England. It is equallyeasy to state the first facts--the facts which involved Europe. The Princewho practically ruled Austria was shot by certain persons whom the AustrianGovernment believed to be conspirators from Servia. The Austrian Governmentpiled up arms and armies, but said not a word either to Servia theirsuspect or Italy their ally. From the documents it would seem that Austriakept everybody in the dark, except Prussia. It is probably nearer the truthto say that Prussia kept everybody in the dark, including Austria. But allthat is what is called opinion, belief, conviction or common-sense, and weare not dealing with it here. The objective fact is that Austria toldServia to permit Servian officers to be suspended by the authority ofAustrian officers, and told Servia to submit to this within forty-eighthours. In other words, the sovereign of Servia was practically told to takeoff not only the laurels of two great campaigns but his own lawful andnational crown, and to do it in a time in which no respectable citizen isexpected to discharge an hotel bill. Servia asked for time, forarbitration--in short, for peace. But Prussia had already begun tomobilise; and Prussia, presuming that Servia might thus be rescued, declared war. Between these two ends of fact, the ultimatum to Servia, the ultimatum toBelgium, any one so inclined can of course talk as if everything wererelative. If any one ask why the Czar should rush to the support of Servia, it is as easy to ask why the Kaiser should rush to the support of Austria. If any one say that the French would attack the Germans, it is sufficientto answer that the Germans did attack the French. There remain, however, two attitudes to consider, even perhaps two arguments to counter, which canbest be considered and countered under this general head of facts. First ofall, there is a curious, cloudy sort of argument, much affected by theprofessional rhetoricians of Prussia, who are sent out to instruct andcorrect the minds of Americans or Scandinavians. It consists of going intoconvulsions of incredulity and scorn at the mention of Russia'sresponsibility for Servia or England's responsibility for Belgium; andsuggesting that, treaty or no treaty, frontier or no frontier, Russia wouldbe out to slay Teutons or England to steal colonies. Here, as elsewhere, Ithink the professors dotted all over the Baltic plain fail in lucidity, andin the power of distinguishing ideas. Of course it is quite true thatEngland has material interests to defend, and will probably use theopportunity to defend them: or, in other words, of course England, likeeverybody else, would be more comfortable if Prussia were less predominant. The fact remains that we did not do what the Germans did. We did notinvade Holland to seize a naval and commercial advantage: and whether theysay that we wished to do it in our greed, or feared to do it in ourcowardice, the fact remains that we did not do it. Unless this common-senseprinciple be kept in view, I cannot conceive how any quarrel can possiblybe judged. A contract may be made between two persons solely for materialadvantage on each side: but the moral advantage is still generally supposedto lie with the person who keeps the contract. Surely it cannot bedishonest to be honest--even if honesty is the best policy. Imagine themost complex maze of indirect motives; and still the man who keeps faithfor money cannot possibly be worse than the man who breaks faith for money. It will be noted that this ultimate test applies in the same way to Serviaas to Belgium and Britain. The Servians may not be a very peaceful people;but, on the occasion under discussion, it was certainly they who wantedpeace. You may choose to think the Serb a sort of born robber: but on thisoccasion it was certainly the Austrian who was trying to rob. Similarly, you may call England perfidious as a sort of historical summary; anddeclare your private belief that Mr. Asquith was vowed from infancy to theruin of the German Empire, a Hannibal and hater of the eagles. But, whenall is said, it is nonsense to call a man perfidious because he keeps hispromise. It is absurd to complain of the sudden treachery of a business manin turning up punctually to his appointment: or the unfair shock given to acreditor by the debtor paying his debts. Lastly, there is an attitude not unknown in the crisis against which Ishould particularly like to protest. I should address my protest especiallyto those lovers and pursuers of Peace who, very short-sightedly, haveoccasionally adopted it. I mean the attitude which is impatient of thesepreliminary details about who did this or that, and whether it was right orwrong. They are satisfied with saying that an enormous calamity, calledWar, has been begun by some or all of us; and should be ended by some orall of us. To these people this preliminary chapter about the precisehappenings must appear not only dry (and it must of necessity be the driestpart of the task) but essentially needless and barren. I wish to tell thesepeople that they are wrong; that they are wrong upon all principles ofhuman justice and historic continuity: but that they are specially andsupremely wrong upon their own principles of arbitration and internationalpeace. These sincere and high-minded peace-lovers are always telling us thatcitizens no longer settle their quarrels by private violence; and thatnations should no longer settle theirs by public violence. They are alwaystelling us that we no longer fight duels; and need no longer wage wars. Inshort, they perpetually base their peace proposals on the fact that anordinary citizen no longer avenges himself with an axe. But how is heprevented from revenging himself with an axe? If he hits his neighbour onthe head with the kitchen chopper, what do we do? Do we all join hands, like children playing Mulberry Bush, and say "We are all responsible forthis; but let us hope it will not spread. Let us hope for the happy daywhen he shall leave off chopping at the man's head; and when nobody shallever chop anything for ever and ever. " Do we say "Let byegones be byegones;why go back to all the dull details with which the business began; who cantell with what sinister motives the man was standing there within reach ofthe hatchet?" We do not. We keep the peace in private life by asking forthe facts of provocation, and the proper object of punishment. We do gointo the dull details; we do enquire into the origins; we do emphaticallyenquire who it was that hit first. In short we do what I have done verybriefly in this place. Given this, it is indeed true that behind these facts there are truths;truths of a terrible, of a spiritual sort. In mere fact, the Germanic powerhas been wrong about Servia, wrong about Russia, wrong about Belgium, wrongabout England, wrong about Italy. But there was a reason for its beingwrong everywhere; and of that root reason, which has moved half the worldagainst it, I shall speak later. For that is something too omnipresent tobe proved, too indisputable to be helped by detail. It is nothing less thanthe locating, after more than a hundred years of recriminations and wrongexplanations, of the modern European evil: the finding of the fountain fromwhich poison has flowed upon all the nations of the earth. I THE WAR ON THE WORD It will hardly be denied that there is one lingering doubt in many, whorecognise unavoidable self-defence in the instant parry of the Englishsword, and who have no great love for the sweeping sabre of Sadowa andSedan. That doubt is the doubt whether Russia, as compared with Prussia, issufficiently decent and democratic to be the ally of liberal and civilisedpowers. I take first, therefore, this matter of civilisation. It is vital in a discussion like this, that we should make sure we aregoing by meanings and not by mere words. It is not necessary in anyargument to settle what a word means or ought to mean. But it is necessaryin every argument to settle what we propose to mean by the word. So long asour opponent understands what is the _thing_ of which we are talking, itdoes not matter to the argument whether the word is or is not the one hewould have chosen. A soldier does not say "We were ordered to go toMechlin; but I would rather go to Malines. " He may discuss the etymologyand archæology of the difference on the march; but the point is that heknows where to go. So long as we know what a given word is to mean in agiven discussion, it does not even matter if it means something else insome other and quite distinct discussion. We have a perfect right to saythat the width of a window comes to four feet; even if we instantly andcheerfully change the subject to the larger mammals; and say that anelephant has four feet. The identity of the words does not matter, becausethere is no doubt at all about the meanings; because nobody is likely tothink of an elephant as four foot long, or of a window as having tusks anda curly trunk. It is essential to emphasise this consciousness of the _thing_ underdiscussion in connection with two or three words that are, as it were, thekey-words of this war. One of them is the word "barbarian. " The Prussiansapply it to the Russians: the Russians apply it to the Prussians. Both, Ithink, really mean something that really exists, name or no name. Both meandifferent things. And if we ask what these different things are, we shallunderstand why England and France prefer Russia; and consider Prussia thereally dangerous barbarian of the two. To begin with, it goes so muchdeeper even than atrocities; of which, in the past at least, all the threeEmpires of Central Europe have partaken pretty equally, as they partook ofPoland. An English writer, seeking to avert the war by warnings againstRussian influence, said that the flogged backs of Polish women stoodbetween us and the Alliance. But not long before, the flogging of women byan Austrian general led to that officer being thrashed in the streets ofLondon by Barclay and Perkins' draymen. And as for the third power, thePrussians, it seems clear that they have treated Belgian women in a stylecompared with which flogging might be called an official formality. But, as I say, something much deeper than any such recrimination lies behind theuse of the word on either side. When the German Emperor complains of ourallying ourselves with a barbaric and half-oriental power he is not (Iassure you) shedding tears over the grave of Kosciusko. And when I say (asI do most heartily) that the German Emperor is a barbarian, I am not merelyexpressing any prejudices I may have against the profanation of churches orof children. My countrymen and I mean a certain and intelligible thing whenwe call the Prussians barbarians. It is quite different from the thingattributed to Russians; and it could not possibly be attributed toRussians. It is very important that the neutral world should understandwhat this thing is. If the German calls the Russian barbarous he presumably means imperfectlycivilised. There is a certain path along which Western nations haveproceeded in recent times; and it is tenable that Russia has not proceededso far as the others: that she has less of the special modern system inscience, commerce, machinery, travel or political constitution. The Russploughs with an old plough; he wears a wild beard; he adores relics; hislife is as rude and hard as that of a subject of Alfred the Great. Therefore he is, in the German sense, a barbarian. Poor fellows like Gorkyand Dostoieffsky have to form their own reflections on the scenery, withoutthe assistance of large quotations from Schiller on garden seats; orinscriptions directing them to pause and thank the All-Father for thefinest view in Hesse-Pumpernickel. The Russians, having nothing but theirfaith, their fields, their great courage, and their self-governingcommunes, are quite cut off from what is called (in the fashionable streetin Frankfort) The True, The Beautiful and The Good. There is a real sensein which one can call such backwardness barbaric; by comparison with theKaiserstrasse; and in that sense it is true of Russia. Now we, the French and English, do not mean this when we call the Prussiansbarbarians. If their cities soared higher than their flying ships, iftheir trains travelled faster than their bullets, we should still call thembarbarians. We should know exactly what we meant by it; and we should knowthat it is true. For we do not mean anything that is an imperfectcivilisation by accident. We mean something that is the enemy ofcivilisation by design. We mean something that is wilfully at war with theprinciples by which human society has been made possible hitherto. Ofcourse it must be partly civilised even to destroy civilisation. Such ruincould not be wrought by the savages that are merely undeveloped or inert. You could not have even Huns without horses; or horses withouthorsemanship. You could not have even Danish pirates without ships, orships without seamanship. This person, whom I may call the PositiveBarbarian, must be rather more superficially up-to-date than what I maycall the Negative Barbarian. Alaric was an officer in the Roman legions:but for all that he destroyed Rome. Nobody supposes that Eskimos could havedone it at all neatly. But (in our meaning) barbarism is not a matter ofmethods but of aims. We say that these veneered vandals have the perfectlyserious aim of destroying certain ideas which, as they think, the world hasoutgrown; without which, as we think, the world will die. It is essential that this perilous peculiarity in the Pruss, or PositiveBarbarian, should be seized. He has what he fancies is a new idea; and heis going to apply it to everybody. As a fact it is simply a falsegeneralisation; but he is really trying to make it general. This does notapply to the Negative Barbarian: it does not apply to the Russian or theServian, even if they are barbarians. If a Russian peasant does beat hiswife, he does it because his fathers did it before him: he is likely tobeat less rather than more as the past fades away. He does not think, asthe Prussian would, that he has made a new discovery in physiology infinding that a woman is weaker than a man. If a Servian does knife hisrival without a word, he does it because other Servians have done it. Hemay regard it even as piety, but certainly not as progress. He does notthink, as the Prussian does, that he founds a new school of horology bystarting before the word "Go. " He does not think he is in advance of theworld in militarism, merely because he is behind it in morals. No; thedanger of the Pruss is that he is prepared to fight for old errors as ifthey were new truths. He has somehow heard of certain shallowsimplifications; and imagines that we have never heard of them. And, as Ihave said, his limited but very sincere lunacy concentrates chiefly in adesire to destroy two ideas, the twin root ideas of rational society. Thefirst is the idea of record and promise: the second is the idea ofreciprocity. It is plain that the promise, or extension of responsibility through time, is what chiefly distinguishes us, I will not say from savages, but frombrutes and reptiles. This was noted by the shrewdness of the Old Testament, when it summed up the dark irresponsible enormity of Leviathan in the words"Will he make a pact with thee?" The promise, like the wheel, is unknown inNature: and is the first mark of man. Referring only to human civilisationit may be said with seriousness, that in the beginning was the Word. Thevow is to the man what the song is to the bird, or the bark to the dog; hisvoice, whereby he is known. Just as a man who cannot keep an appointment isnot fit even to fight a duel, so the man who cannot keep an appointmentwith himself is not sane enough even for suicide. It is not easy to mentionanything on which the enormous apparatus of human life can be said todepend. But if it depends on anything, it is on this frail cord, flung fromthe forgotten hills of yesterday to the invisible mountains of to-morrow. On that solitary string hangs everything from Armageddon to an almanac, from a successful revolution to a return ticket. On that solitary stringthe Barbarian is hacking heavily, with a sabre which is fortunately blunt. Any one can see this well enough, merely by reading the last negotiationsbetween London and Berlin. The Prussians had made a new discovery ininternational politics: that it may often be convenient to make a promise;and yet curiously inconvenient to keep it. They were charmed, in theirsimple way, with this scientific discovery, and desired to communicate itto the world. They therefore promised England a promise, on condition thatshe broke a promise, and on the implied condition that the new promisemight be broken as easily as the old one. To the profound astonishment ofPrussia, this reasonable offer was refused! I believe that the astonishmentof Prussia was quite sincere. That is what I mean when I say that theBarbarian is trying to cut away that cord of honesty and clear record, onwhich hangs all that men have made. The friends of the German cause have complained that Asiatics and Africansupon the very verge of savagery have been brought against them from Indiaand Algiers. And, in ordinary circumstances, I should sympathise with sucha complaint made by a European people. But the circumstances are notordinary. Here, again, the quite unique barbarism of Prussia goes deeperthan what we call barbarities. About mere barbarities, it is true, theTurco and the Sikh would have a very good reply to the superior Teuton. The general and just reason for not using non-European tribes againstEuropeans is that given by Chatham against the use of the Red Indian: thatsuch allies might do very diabolical things. But the poor Turco might notunreasonably ask, after a weekend in Belgium, what more diabolical thingshe _could_ do than the highly cultured Germans were doing themselves. Nevertheless, as I say, the justification of any extra-European aid goesdeeper than any such details. It rests upon the fact that even othercivilisations, even much lower civilisations, even remote and repulsivecivilisations, depend as much as our own on this primary principle on whichthe super-morality of Potsdam declares open War. Even savages promisethings; and respect those who keep their promises. Even Orientals writethings down: and though they write them from right to left, they know theimportance of a scrap of paper. Many merchants will tell you that the wordof the sinister and almost unhuman Chinaman is often as good as his bond:and it was amid palm trees and Syrian pavilions that the great utteranceopened the tabernacle, to him that sweareth to his hurt and changeth not. There is doubtless a dense labyrinth of duplicity in the East, and perhapsmore guile in the individual Asiatic than in the individual German. But weare not talking of the violations of human morality in various parts of theworld. We are talking about a new and inhuman morality, which deniesaltogether the day of obligation. The Prussians have been told by theirliterary men that everything depends upon Mood: and by their politiciansthat all arrangements dissolve before "necessity. " That is the importanceof the German Chancellor's phrase. He did not allege some special excuse inthe case of Belgium, which might make it seem an exception that proved therule. He distinctly argued, as on a principle applicable to other cases, that victory was a necessity and honour was a scrap of paper. And it isevident that the half-educated Prussian imagination really cannot get anyfurther than this. It cannot see that if everybody's action were entirelyincalculable from hour to hour, it would not only be the end of allpromises, but the end of all projects. In not being able to see that, theBerlin philosopher is really on a lower mental level than the Arab whorespects the salt, or the Brahmin who preserves the caste. And in thisquarrel we have a right to come with scimitars as well as sabres, with bowsas well as rifles, with assegai and tomahawk and boomerang, because thereis in all these at least a seed of civilisation that these intellectualanarchists would kill. And if they should find us in our last stand girtwith such strange swords and following unfamiliar ensigns, and ask us forwhat we fight in so singular a company, we shall know what to reply: "Wefight for the trust and for the tryst; for fixed memories and the possiblemeeting of men; for all that makes life anything but an uncontrollablenightmare. We fight for the long arm of honour and remembrance; for allthat can lift a man above the quicksands of his moods, and give him themastery of time. " II THE REFUSAL OF RECIPROCITY In the last summary I suggested that Barbarism, as we mean it, is not mereignorance or even mere cruelty. It has a more precise sense, and meansmilitant hostility to certain necessary human ideas. I took the case of thevow or the contract, which Prussian intellectualism would destroy. I urgedthat the Prussian is a spiritual Barbarian, because he is not bound by hisown past, any more than a man in a dream. He avows that when he promised torespect a frontier on Monday, he did not foresee what he calls "thenecessity" of not respecting it on Tuesday. In short, he is like a child, who at the end of all reasonable explanations and reminders of admittedarrangements, has no answer except "But I _want_ to. " There is another idea in human arrangements so fundamental as to beforgotten; but now for the first time denied. It may be called the idea ofreciprocity; or, in better English, of give and take. The Prussian appearsto be quite intellectually incapable of this thought. He cannot, I think, conceive the idea that is the foundation of all comedy; that, in the eyesof the other man, he is only the other man. And if we carry this cluethrough the institutions of Prussianised Germany, we shall find howcuriously his mind has been limited in the matter. The German differs fromother patriots in the inability to understand patriotism. Other Europeanpeoples pity the Poles or the Welsh for their violated borders; but Germanspity only themselves. They might take forcible possession of the Severn orthe Danube, of the Thames or the Tiber, of the Garry or the Garonne--andthey would still be singing sadly about how fast and true stands the watchon Rhine; and what a shame it would be if any one took their own littleriver away from them. That is what I mean by not being reciprocal: and youwill find it in all that they do: as in all that is done by savages. Here, again, it is very necessary to avoid confusing this soul of thesavage with mere savagery in the sense of brutality or butchery; in whichthe Greeks, the French and all the most civilised nations have indulged inhours of abnormal panic or revenge. Accusations of cruelty are generallymutual. But it is the point about the Prussian that with him nothing ismutual. The definition of the true savage does not concern itself even withhow much more he hurts strangers or captives than do the other tribes ofmen. The definition of the true savage is that he laughs when he hurts you;and howls when you hurt him. This extraordinary inequality in the mind isin every act and word that comes from Berlin. For instance, no man of theworld believes all he sees in the newspapers; and no journalist believes aquarter of it. We should, therefore, be quite ready in the ordinary way totake a great deal off the tales of German atrocities; to doubt this storyor deny that. But there is one thing that we cannot doubt or deny: the sealand authority of the Emperor. In the Imperial proclamation the fact thatcertain "frightful" things have been done is admitted; and justified on theground of their frightfulness. It was a military necessity to terrify thepeaceful populations with something that was not civilised, something thatwas hardly human. Very well. That is an intelligible policy: and in thatsense an intelligible argument. An army endangered by foreigners may do themost frightful things. But then we turn the next page of the Kaiser'spublic diary, and we find him writing to the President of the UnitedStates, to complain that the English are using Dum-dum bullets andviolating various regulations of the Hague Conference. I pass for thepresent the question of whether there is a word of truth in these charges. I am content to gaze rapturously at the blinking eyes of the True, orPositive, Barbarian. I suppose he would be quite puzzled if we said thatviolating the Hague Conference was "a military necessity" to us; or thatthe rules of the Conference were only a scrap of paper. He would be quitepained if we said that Dum-dum bullets, "by their very frightfulness, "would be very useful to keep conquered Germans in order. Do what he will, he cannot get outside the idea that he, because he is he and not you, isfree to break the law; and also to appeal to the law. It is said that thePrussian officers play at a game called Kriegsspiel, or the War Game. Butin truth they could not play at any game; for the essence of every game isthat the rules are the same on both sides. But taking every German institution in turn, the case is the same; and itis not a case of mere bloodshed or military bravado. The duel, forexample, can legitimately be called a barbaric thing; but the word is hereused in another sense. There are duels in Germany; but so there are inFrance, Italy, Belgium, and Spain; indeed, there are duels wherever thereare dentists, newspapers, Turkish baths, time-tables, and all the curses ofcivilisation; except in England and a corner of America. You may happen toregard the duel as a historic relic of the more barbaric States on whichthese modern States were built. It might equally well be maintained thatthe duel is everywhere the sign of high civilisation; being the sign of itsmore delicate sense of honour, its more vulnerable vanity, or its greaterdread of social disrepute. But whichever of the two views you take, youmust concede that the essence of the duel is an armed equality. I shouldnot, therefore, apply the word barbaric, as I am using it, to the duels ofGerman officers, or even to the broadsword combats that are conventionalamong the German students. I do not see why a young Prussian should nothave scars all over his face if he likes them; nay, they are often theredeeming points of interest on an otherwise somewhat unenlighteningcountenance. The duel may be defended; the sham duel may be defended. What cannot be defended is something really peculiar to Prussia, of whichwe hear numberless stories, some of them certainly true. It might be calledthe one-sided duel. I mean the idea that there is some sort of dignity indrawing the sword upon a man who has not got a sword; a waiter, or a shopassistant, or even a schoolboy. One of the officers of the Kaiser in theaffair at Saberne was found industriously hacking at a cripple. In allthese matters I would avoid sentiment. We must not lose our tempers at themere cruelty of the thing; but pursue the strict psychological distinction. Others besides German soldiers have slain the defenceless, for loot or lustor private malice, like any other murderer. The point is that nowhere elsebut in Prussian Germany is any theory of honour mixed up with such things;any more than with poisoning or picking pockets. No French, English, Italian or American gentleman would think he had in some way cleared hisown character by sticking his sabre through some ridiculous greengrocer whohad nothing in his hand but a cucumber. It would seem as if the word whichis translated from the German as "honour" must really mean something quitedifferent in German. It seems to mean something more like what we shouldcall "prestige. " The fundamental fact, however, is the absence of the reciprocal idea. ThePrussian is not sufficiently civilised for the duel. Even when he crossesswords with us his thoughts are not as our thoughts; when we both glorifywar, we are glorifying different things. Our medals are wrought like his, but they do not mean the same thing; our regiments are cheered as his are, but the thought in the heart is not the same; the Iron Cross is on thebosom of his king, but it is not the sign of our God. For we, alas, followour God with many relapses and self-contradictions, but he follows his veryconsistently. Through all the things that we have examined, the view ofnational boundaries, the view of military methods, the view of personalhonour and self-defence, there runs in their case something of an atrocioussimplicity; something too simple for us to understand: the idea that gloryconsists in holding the steel, and not in facing it. If further examples were necessary, it would be easy to give hundreds ofthem. Let us leave, for the moment, the relation between man and man inthe thing called the duel. Let us take the relation between man and woman, in that immortal duel which we call a marriage. Here again we shall findthat other Christian civilisations aim at some kind of equality; even ifthe balance be irrational or dangerous. Thus, the two extremes of thetreatment of women might be represented by what are called the respectableclasses in America and in France. In America they choose the risk ofcomradeship; in France the compensation of courtesy. In America it ispractically possible for any young gentleman to take any young lady forwhat he calls (I deeply regret to say) a joy-ride; but at least the mangoes with the woman as much as the woman with the man. In France the youngwoman is protected like a nun while she is unmarried; but when she is amother she is really a holy woman; and when she is a grandmother she is aholy terror. By both extremes the woman gets something back out of life. There is only one place where she gets little or nothing back; and that isthe north of Germany. France and America aim alike at equality; America bysimilarity; France by dissimilarity. But North Germany does definitelyaim at inequality. The woman stands up, with no more irritation than abutler; the man sits down, with no more embarrassment than a guest. This isthe cool affirmation of inferiority, as in the case of the sabre and thetradesman. "Thou goest with women; forget not thy whip, " said Nietzsche. Itwill be observed that he does not say "poker"; which might come morenaturally to the mind of a more common or Christian wife-beater. But then apoker is a part of domesticity; and might be used by the wife as well asthe husband. In fact, it often is. The sword and the whip are the weaponsof a privileged caste. Pass from the closest of all differences, that between husband and wife, tothe most distant of all differences, that of the remote and unrelated raceswho have seldom seen each other's faces, and never been tinged with eachother's blood. Here we still find the same unvarying Prussian principle. Any European might feel a genuine fear of the Yellow Peril; and manyEnglishmen, Frenchmen, and Russians have felt and expressed it. Many mightsay, and have said, that the Heathen Chinee is very heathen indeed; that ifhe ever advances against us he will trample and torture and utterlydestroy, in a way that Eastern people do, but Western people do not. Nor doI doubt the German Emperor's sincerity when he sought to point out to ushow abnormal and abominable such a nightmare campaign would be, supposingthat it could ever come. But now comes the comic irony; which never failsto follow on the attempt of the Prussian to be philosophic. For the Kaiser, after explaining to his troops how important it was to avoid EasternBarbarism, instantly commanded them to become Eastern Barbarians. He toldthem, in so many words, to be Huns: and leave nothing living or standingbehind them. In fact, he frankly offered a new army corps of aboriginalTartars to the Far East, within such time as it may take a bewilderedHanoverian to turn into a Tartar. Any one who has the painful habit ofpersonal thought, will perceive here at once the non-reciprocal principleagain. Boiled down to its bones of logic, it means simply this: "I am aGerman and you are a Chinaman. Therefore I, being a German, have a rightto be a Chinaman. But you have no right to be a Chinaman; because you areonly a Chinaman. " This is probably the highest point to which the Germanculture has risen. The principle here neglected, which may be called Mutuality by those whomisunderstand and dislike the word Equality, does not offer so clear adistinction between the Prussian and the other peoples as did the firstPrussian principle of an infinite and destructive opportunism; or, in otherwords, the principle of being unprincipled. Nor upon this second can onetake up so obvious a position touching the other civilisations orsemi-civilisations of the world. Some idea of oath and bond there is in therudest tribes, in the darkest continents. But it might be maintained, ofthe more delicate and imaginative element of reciprocity, that a cannibalin Borneo understands it almost as little as a professor in Berlin. Anarrow and one-sided seriousness is the fault of barbarians all over theworld. This may have been the meaning, for aught I know, of the one eye ofthe Cyclops: that the Barbarian cannot see round things or look at themfrom two points of view; and thus becomes a blind beast and an eater ofmen. Certainly there can be no better summary of the savage than this, which as we have seen, unfits him for the duel. He is the man who cannotlove--no, nor even hate--his neighbour as himself. But this quality in Prussia does have one effect which has reference to thesame question of the lower civilisations. It disposes once and for all atleast of the civilising mission of Germany. Evidently the Germans are thelast people in the world to be trusted with the task. They are asshortsighted morally as physically. What is their sophism of "necessity"but an inability to imagine to-morrow morning? What is theirnon-reciprocity but an inability to imagine, not a god or devil, but merely another man? Are these to judge mankind? Men of two tribesin Africa not only know that they are all men, but can understandthat they are all black men. In this they are quite seriously inadvance of the intellectual Prussian; who cannot be got to seethat we are all white men. The ordinary eye is unable to perceivein the North-East Teuton anything that marks him out especiallyfrom the more colourless classes of the rest of Aryan mankind. He is simplya white man, with a tendency to the grey or the drab. Yet he will explain, in serious official documents, that the difference between him and us is adifference between "the master-race and the inferior-race. " The collapse ofGerman philosophy always occurs at the beginning rather than the end of anargument; and the difficulty here is that there is no way of testing whichis a master-race except by asking which is your own race. If you cannotfind out (as is usually the case) you fall back on the absurd occupation ofwriting history about pre-historic times. But I suggest quite seriouslythat if the Germans can give their philosophy to the Hottentots, there isno reason why they should not give their sense of superiority to theHottentots. If they can see such fine shades between the Goth and theGaul, there is no reason why similar shades should not lift the savageabove other savages; why any Ojibway should not discover that he is onetint redder than the Dacotahs; or any nigger in the Cameroons say he is notso black as he is painted. For this principle of a quite unproved racialsupremacy is the last and worst of the refusals of reciprocity. ThePrussian calls all men to admire the beauty of his large blue eyes. If theydo, it is because they have inferior eyes: if they don't, it is becausethey have no eyes. Wherever the most miserable remnant of our race, astray and dried up indeserts, or buried forever under the fall of bad civilisations, has somefeeble memory that men are men, that bargains are bargains, that there aretwo sides to a question, or even that it takes two to make a quarrel--thatremnant has the right to resist the New Culture, to the knife and club andthe splintered stone. For the Prussian begins all his culture by that actwhich is the destruction of all creative thought and constructive action. He breaks that mirror in the mind, in which a man can see the face of hisfriend or foe. III THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY The German Emperor has reproached this country with allying itself with"barbaric and semi-oriental power. " We have already considered in whatsense we use the word barbaric: it is in the sense of one who is hostile tocivilisation, not one who is insufficient in it. But when we pass from theidea of the barbaric to the idea of the oriental, the case is even morecurious. There is nothing particularly Tartar in Russian affairs, exceptthe fact that Russia expelled the Tartars. The Eastern invader occupiedand crushed the country for many years; but that is equally true of Greece, of Spain and even of Austria. If Russia has suffered from the East she hassuffered in order to resist it: and it is rather hard that the very miracleof her escape should make a mystery about her origin. Jonah may or may nothave been three days inside a fish, but that does not make him a merman. And in all the other cases of European nations who escaped the monstrouscaptivity, we do admit the purity and continuity of the European type. Weconsider the old Eastern rule as a wound, but not as a stain. Copper-coloured men out of Africa overruled for centuries the religion andpatriotism of Spaniards. Yet I have never heard that Don Quixote was anAfrican fable on the lines of Uncle Remus. I have never heard that theheavy black in the pictures of Velasquez was due to a negro ancestry. Inthe case of Spain, which is close to us, we can recognise the resurrectionof a Christian and cultured nation after its age of bondage. But Russia israther remote; and those to whom nations are but names in newspapers canreally fancy, like Mr. Baring's friend, that all Russian churches are"mosques. " Yet the land of Turgenev is not a wilderness of fakirs; and eventhe fanatical Russian is as proud of being different from the Mongol, asthe fanatical Spaniard was proud of being different from the Moor. The town of Reading, as it exists, offers few opportunities for piracy onthe high seas: yet it was the camp of the pirates in Alfred's day. I shouldthink it hard to call the people of Berkshire half-Danish, merely becausethey drove out the Danes. In short, some temporary submergence under thesavage flood was the fate of many of the most civilised states ofChristendom; and it is quite ridiculous to argue that Russia, whichwrestled hardest, must have recovered least. Everywhere, doubtless, theEast spread a sort of enamel over the conquered countries, but everywherethe enamel cracked. Actual history, in fact, is exactly opposite to thecheap proverb invented against the Muscovite. It is not true to say"Scratch a Russian and you find a Tartar. " In the darkest hour of thebarbaric dominion it was truer to say, "Scratch a Tartar and you find aRussian. " It was the civilisation that survived under all the barbarism. This vital romance of Russia, this revolution against Asia, can be provedin pure fact: not only from the almost superhuman activity of Russia duringthe struggle, but also (which is much rarer as human history goes) by herquite consistent conduct since. She is the only great nation which hasreally expelled the Mongol from her country, and continued to protestagainst the presence of the Mongol in her continent. Knowing what he hadbeen in Russia, she knew what he would be in Europe. In this she pursued alogical line of thought which was, if anything, too unsympathetic with theenergies and religions of the East. Every other country, one may say, hasbeen an ally of the Turk; that is, of the Mongol and the Moslem. The Frenchplayed them as pieces against Austria; the English warmly supported themunder the Palmerston régime; even the young Italians sent troops to theCrimea; and of Prussia and her Austrian vassal it is nowadays needless tospeak. For good or evil, it is the fact of history that Russia is the onlyPower in Europe that has never supported the Crescent against the Cross. That, doubtless, will appear an unimportant matter; but it may becomeimportant under certain peculiar conditions. Suppose, for the sake ofargument, that there were a powerful prince in Europe who had goneostentatiously out of his way to pay reverence to the remains of theTartar, Mongol and Moslem, left as an outpost in Europe. Suppose there werea Christian Emperor who could not even go to the tomb of the Crucified, without pausing to congratulate the last and living crucifier. If therewere an Emperor who gave guns and guides and maps and drill instructors todefend the remains of the Mongol in Christendom, what should we say to him?I think at least we might ask him what he meant by his impudence, when hetalked about supporting a semi-oriental power. That we support asemi-oriental power, we deny. That he has supported an entirely orientalpower cannot be denied--no, not even by the man who did it. But here is to be noted the essential difference between Russia andPrussia; especially by those who use the ordinary Liberal arguments againstthe latter. Russia has a policy which she pursues, if you will, throughevil and good; but at least so as to produce good as well as evil. Let itbe granted that the policy has made her oppressive to the Finns and thePoles--though the Russian Poles feel far less oppressed than do thePrussian Poles. But it is a mere historic fact, that if Russia has been adespot to some small nations, she has been a deliverer to others. She did, so far as in her lay, emancipate the Servians or the Montenegrins. Butwhom did Prussia ever emancipate--even by accident? It is indeed somewhatextraordinary that in the perpetual permutations of international politicsthe Hohenzollerns have never gone astray into the path of enlightenment. They have been in alliance with almost everybody off and on; with France, with England, with Austria, with Russia. Can any one candidly say that theyhave left on any one of these people the faintest impress of progress orliberation? Prussia was the enemy of the French Monarchy; but a worseenemy of the French Revolution. Prussia had been an enemy of the Czar; butshe was a worse enemy of the Duma. Prussia totally disregarded Austrianrights; but she is to-day quite ready to inflict Austrian wrongs. This isthe strong particular difference between the one empire and the other. Russia is pursuing certain intelligible and sincere ends, which to her atleast are ideals, and for which, therefore, she will make sacrifices andwill protect the weak. But the North German soldier is a sort of abstracttyrant, everywhere and always on the side of materialistic tyranny. ThisTeuton in uniform has been found in strange places; shooting farmers beforeSaratoga and flogging soldiers in Surrey, hanging niggers in Africa andraping girls in Wicklow; but never, by some mysterious fatality, lending ahand to the freeing of a single city or the independence of one solitaryflag. Wherever scorn and prosperous oppression are, there is the Prussian;unconsciously consistent, instinctively restrictive, innocently evil;"following darkness like a dream. " Suppose we heard of a person (gifted with some longevity) who had helpedAlva to persecute Dutch Protestants, then helped Cromwell to persecuteIrish Catholics, and then helped Claverhouse to persecute Scotch Puritans, we should find it rather easier to call him a persecutor than to call him aProtestant or a Catholic. Curiously enough this is actually the position inwhich the Prussian stands in Europe. No argument can alter the fact that inthree converging and conclusive cases he has been on the side of threedistinct rulers of different religions, who had nothing whatever in commonexcept that they were ruling oppressively. In these three Governments, taken separately, one can see something excusable or at least human. Whenthe Kaiser encouraged the Russian rulers to crush the Revolution, theRussian rulers undoubtedly believed they were wrestling with an inferno ofatheism and anarchy. A Socialist of the ordinary English kind cried outupon me when I spoke of Stolypin, and said he was chiefly known by thehalter called "Stolypin's Necktie. " As a fact, there were many other thingsinteresting about Stolypin besides his necktie: his policy of peasantproprietorship, his extraordinary personal courage, and certainly none moreinteresting than that movement in his death agony, when he made the sign ofthe cross towards the Czar, as the crown and captain of his Christianity. But the Kaiser does not regard the Czar as the captain of Christianity. Farfrom it. What he supported in Stolypin was the necktie and nothing but thenecktie: the gallows and not the cross. The Russian ruler did believe thatthe Orthodox Church was orthodox. The Austrian Archduke did really desireto make the Catholic Church catholic. He did really believe that he wasbeing Pro-Catholic in being Pro-Austrian. But the Kaiser cannot bePro-Catholic, and therefore cannot have been really Pro-Austrian, he wassimply and solely Anti-Servian. Nay, even in the cruel and sterile strengthof Turkey, any one with imagination can see something of the tragedy andtherefore of the tenderness of true belief. The worst that can be said ofthe Moslems is, as the poet put it, they offered to man the choice of theKoran or the sword. The best that can be said for the German is that hedoes not care about the Koran, but is satisfied if he can have the sword. And for me, I confess, even the sins of these three other striving empirestake on, in comparison, something that is sorrowful and dignified: and Ifeel they do not deserve that this little Lutheran lounger should patroniseall that is evil in them, while ignoring all that is good. He is notCatholic, he is not Orthodox, he is not Mahomedan. He is merely an oldgentleman who wishes to share the crime though he cannot share the creed. He desires to be a persecutor by the pang without the palm. So strongly doall the instincts of the Prussian drive against liberty, that he wouldrather oppress other people's subjects than think of anybody going withoutthe benefits of oppression. He is a sort of disinterested despot. He is asdisinterested as the devil who is ready to do any one's dirty work. This would seem obviously fantastic were it not supported by solid factswhich cannot be explained otherwise. Indeed it would be inconceivable if wewere thinking of a whole people, consisting of free and varied individuals. But in Prussia the governing class is really a governing class: and a veryfew people are needed to think along these lines to make all the otherpeople act along them. And the paradox of Prussia is this: that while itsprinces and nobles have no other aim on this earth but to destroy democracywherever it shows itself, they have contrived to get themselves trusted, not as wardens of the past but as forerunners of the future. Even theycannot believe that their theory is popular, but they do believe that it isprogressive. Here again we find the spiritual chasm between the twomonarchies in question. The Russian institutions are, in many cases, really left in the rear of the Russian people, and many of the Russianpeople know it. But the Prussian institutions are supposed to be in advanceof the Prussian people, and most of the Prussian people believe it. It isthus much easier for the warlords to go everywhere and impose a hopelessslavery upon every one, for they have already imposed a sort of hopefulslavery on their own simple race. And when men shall speak to us of the hoary iniquities of Russia and of howantiquated is the Russian system, we shall answer "Yes; that is thesuperiority of Russia. " Their institutions are part of their history, whether as relics or fossils. Their abuses have really been uses: that isto say, they have been used up. If they have old engines of terror ortorment, they may fall to pieces from mere rust, like an old coat ofarmour. But in the case of the Prussian tyranny, if it be tyranny at all, it is the whole point of its claim that it is not antiquated, but justgoing to begin, like the showman. Prussia has a whole thriving factory ofthumbscrews, a whole humming workshop of wheels and racks, of the newestand neatest pattern, with which to win back Europe to the Reaction . .. _infandum renovare dolorem_. And if we wish to test the truth of this, itcan be done by the same method which showed us that Russia, if her race orreligion could sometimes make her an invader and an oppressor, could alsobe made an emancipator and a knight errant. In the same way, if the Russianinstitutions are old-fashioned, they honestly exhibit the good as well asthe bad that can be found in old-fashioned things. In their police systemthey have an inequality which is against our ideas of law. But in theircommune system they have an equality that is older than law itself. Evenwhen they flogged each other like barbarians, they called upon each otherby their Christian names like children. At their worst they retained allthe best of a rude society. At their best, they are simply good, like goodchildren or good nuns. But in Prussia all that is best in the civilisedmachinery is put at the service of all that is worst in the barbaric mind. Here again the Prussian has no accidental merits, none of those luckysurvivals, none of those late repentances, which make the patchwork gloryof Russia. Here all is sharpened to a point and pointed to a purpose andthat purpose, if words and acts have any meaning at all, is the destructionof liberty throughout the world. IV THE ESCAPE OF FOLLY In considering the Prussian point of view we have been considering whatseems to be mainly a mental limitation: a kind of knot in the brain. Towards the problem of Slav population, of English colonisation, of Frencharmies and reinforcements, it shows the same strange philosophic sulks. Sofar as I can follow it, it seems to amount to saying "It is very wrong thatyou should be superior to me, because I am superior to you. " The spokesmenof this system seem to have a curious capacity for concentrating thisentanglement or contradiction, sometimes into a single paragraph, or even asingle sentence. I have already referred to the German Emperor's celebratedsuggestion that in order to avert the peril of Hunnishness we should allbecome Huns. A much stronger instance is his more recent order to histroops touching the war in Northern France. As most people know, his wordsran "It is my Royal and Imperial command that you concentrate yourenergies, for the immediate present, upon one single purpose, and that isthat you address all your skill and all the valour of my soldiers toexterminate first the treacherous English and to walk over General French'scontemptible little Army. " The rudeness of the remark an Englishman canafford to pass over; what I am interested in is the mentality; the train ofthought that can manage to entangle itself even in so brief a space. IfFrench's little Army is contemptible, it would seem clear that all theskill and valour of the German Army had better not be concentrated on it, but on the larger and less contemptible allies. If all the skill andvalour of the German Army are concentrated on it, it is not being treatedas contemptible. But the Prussian rhetorician had two incompatiblesentiments in his mind; and he insisted on saying them both at once. Hewanted to think of an English Army as a small thing; but he also wanted tothink of an English defeat as a big thing. He wanted to exult, at the samemoment, in the utter weakness of the British in their attack; and thesupreme skill and valour of the Germans in repelling such an attack. Somehow it must be made a common and obvious collapse for England; and yeta daring and unexpected triumph for Germany. In trying to express thesecontradictory conceptions simultaneously, he got rather mixed. Therefore hebade Germania fill all her vales and mountains with the dying agonies ofthis almost invisible earwig; and let the impure blood of this cockroachredden the Rhine down to the sea. But it would be unfair to base the criticism on the utterance of anyaccidental and hereditary prince: and it is quite equally clear in the caseof the philosophers who have been held up to us, even in England, as thevery prophets of progress. And in nothing is it shown more sharply than inthe curious confused talk about Race and especially about the TeutonicRace. Professor Harnack and similar people are reproaching us, Iunderstand, for having broken "the bond of Teutonism": a bond which thePrussians have strictly observed both in breach and observance. We note itin their open annexation of lands wholly inhabited by negroes, such asDenmark. We note it equally in their instant and joyful recognition of theflaxen hair and light blue eyes of the Turks. But it is still the abstractprinciple of Professor Harnack which interests me most; and in following itI have the same complexity of enquiry, but the same simplicity of result. Comparing the Professor's concern about "Teutonism" with his unconcernabout Belgium, I can only reach the following result: "A man need not keepa promise he has made. But a man must keep a promise he has not made. "There certainly was a treaty binding Britain to Belgium; if it was only ascrap of paper. If there was any treaty binding Britain to Teutonism it is, to say the least of it, a lost scrap of paper: almost what one might call ascrap of waste-paper. Here again the pendants under consideration exhibitthe illogical perversity that makes the brain reel. There is obligation andthere is no obligation: sometimes it appears that Germany and England mustkeep faith with each other; sometimes that Germany need not keep faith withanybody and anything; sometimes that we alone among European peoples arealmost entitled to be Germans; sometimes that beside us Russians andFrenchmen almost rise to a Germanic loveliness of character. But throughall there is, hazy but not hypocritical, this sense of some commonTeutonism. Professor Haeckel, another of the witnesses raised up against us, attainedto some celebrity at one time through proving the remarkable resemblancebetween two different things by printing duplicate pictures of the samething. Professor Haeckel's contribution to biology, in this case, wasexactly like Professor Harnack's contribution to ethnology. ProfessorHarnack knows what a German is like. When he wants to imagine what anEnglishman is like, he simply photographs the same German over again. Inboth cases there is probably sincerity as well as simplicity. Haeckel wasso certain that the species illustrated in embryo really are closelyrelated and linked up, that it seemed to him a small thing to simplify itby mere repetition. Harnack is so certain that the German and Englishmanare almost alike, that he really risks the generalisation that they areexactly alike. He photographs, so to speak, the same fair and foolish facetwice over; and calls it a remarkable resemblance between cousins. Thus hecan prove the existence of Teutonism just about as conclusively as Haeckelhas proved the more tenable proposition of the non-existence of God. Nowthe German and the Englishman are not in the least alike--except in thesense that neither of them are negroes. They are, in everything good andevil, more unlike than any other two men we can take at random from thegreat European family. They are opposite from the roots of their history, nay, of their geography. It is an understatement to call Britain insular. Britain is not only an island, but an island slashed by the sea till itnearly splits into three islands; and even the Midlands can almost smellthe salt. Germany is a powerful, beautiful and fertile inland country, which can only find the sea by one or two twisted and narrow paths, aspeople find a subterranean lake. Thus the British Navy is really nationalbecause it is natural; it has co-hered out of hundreds of accidentaladventures of ships and shipmen before Chaucer's time and after it. But theGerman Navy is an artificial thing; as artificial as a constructed Alpwould be in England. William II has simply copied the British Navy asFrederick II copied the French Army: and this Japanese or anti-likeassiduity in imitation is one of the hundred qualities which the Germanshave and the English markedly have not. There are other Germansuperiorities which are very much superior. The one or two really jollythings that the Germans have got are precisely the things which the Englishhaven't got: notably a real habit of popular music and of the ancient songsof the people, not merely spreading from the towns or caught from theprofessionals. In this the Germans rather resemble the Welsh: though heavenknows what becomes of Teutonism if they do. But the difference between theGermans and the English goes deeper than all these signs of it; they differmore than any other two Europeans in the normal posture of the mind. Aboveall, they differ in what is the most English of all English traits; thatshame which the French may be right in calling "the bad shame"; for it iscertainly mixed up with pride and suspicion, the upshot of which we callshyness. Even an Englishman's rudeness is often rooted in his beingembarrassed. But a German's rudeness is rooted in his never beingembarrassed. He eats and makes love noisily. He never feels a speech or asong or a sermon or a large meal to be what the English call "out of place"in particular circumstances. When Germans are patriotic and religious theyhave no reactions against patriotism and religion as have the English andthe French. Nay, the mistake of Germany in the modern disaster largelyarose from the facts that she thought England was simple when England isvery subtle. She thought that because our politics have become largelyfinancial that they had become wholly financial; that because ouraristocrats had become pretty cynical that they had become entirelycorrupt. They could not seize the subtlety by which a rather used-upEnglish gentleman might sell a coronet when he would not sell a fortress;might lower the public standards and yet refuse to lower the flag. Inshort, the Germans are quite sure that they understand us entirely, becausethey do not understand us at all. Possibly if they began to understand usthey might hate us even more: but I would rather be hated for some smallbut real reason than pursued with love on account of all kinds of qualitieswhich I do not possess and which I do not desire. And when the Germans gettheir first genuine glimpse of what modern England is like they willdiscover that England has a very broken, belated and inadequate sense ofhaving an obligation to Europe, but no sort of sense whatever of having anyobligation to Teutonism. This is the last and strongest of the Prussian qualities we have hereconsidered. There is in stupidity of this sort a strange slipperystrength: because it can be not only outside rules but outside reason. Theman who really cannot see that he is contradicting himself has a greatadvantage in controversy; though the advantage breaks down when he tries toreduce it to simple addition, to chess, or to the game called war. It isthe same about the stupidity of the one-sided kinship. The drunkard who isquite certain that a total stranger is his long-lost brother, has a greateradvantage until it comes to matters of detail. "We must have chaos within"said Nietzsche, "that we may give birth to a dancing star. " In these slight notes I have suggested the principal strong points of thePrussian character. A failure in honour which almost amounts to a failurein memory: an egomania that is honestly blind to the fact that the otherparty is an ego; and, above all, an actual itch for tyranny andinterference, the devil which everywhere torments the idle and the proud. To these must be added a certain mental shapelessness which can expand orcontract without reference to reason or record; a potential infinity ofexcuses. If the English had been on the German side, the German professorswould have noted what irresistible energies had evolved the Teutons. As theEnglish are on the other side, the German professors will say that theseTeutons were not sufficiently evolved. Or they will say that they werejust sufficiently evolved to show that they were not Teutons. Probably theywill say both. But the truth is that all that they call evolution shouldrather be called evasion. They tell us they are opening windows ofenlightenment and doors of progress. The truth is that they are breaking upthe whole house of the human intellect, that they may abscond in anydirection. There is an ominous and almost monstrous parallel between theposition of their over-rated philosophers and of their comparativelyunder-rated soldiers. For what their professors call roads of progress arereally routes of escape. LETTERS TO AN OLD GARIBALDIAN Italy, twice hast thou spoken; and time is athirstfor the third. --SWINBURNE. My Dear ------ It is a long time since we met; and I fear these letters may never reachyou. But in these violent times I remember with a curious vividness how youbrandished a paintbrush about your easel when I was a boy; and how itthrilled me to think that you had so brandished a bayonet against theTeutons--I hope with the same precision and happy results. Round aboutthat period, the very pigments seemed to have some sort of picturesqueconnection with your national story. There seemed to be something gorgeousand terrible about Venetian Red; and something quite catastrophic aboutBurnt Sienna. But somehow or other, when I saw in the street yesterday thecolours on your flag, it reminded me of the colours on your palette. You need not fear that I shall try to entangle you or your countrymen inthe matters which it is for Italians alone to decide. You know the perilsof either course much better than I do. Italy, most assuredly, has no needto prove her courage. She has risked everything in standing out that shecould risk by coming in. The proclamations and press of Germany make itplain that the Germans have risen to a height of sensibility hardly to bedistinguished from madness. Supposing the nightmare of a Prussian victory, they will revenge themselves on things more remote than the TripleAlliance. There was a promise of peace between them and Belgium; there wasnone between them and England. The promise to Belgium they broke. Thepromise of England they invented. It is called the Treaty of Teutonism. Noone ever heard of it in this country; but it seems well known in academiccircles in Germany. It seems to be something, connected with the colour ofone's hair. But I repeat that I am not concerned to interfere with yourdecision, save in so far as I may provide some materials for it bydescribing our own. For I think the first, perhaps the only, fruitful work an Englishman can donow for the formation of foreign opinion is to talk about what he reallyunderstands, the condition of British opinion. It is as simple as it issolid. For the first time, perhaps, what we call the United Kingdomentirely deserves its name. There has been nothing like such unanimitywithin an Englishman's recollection. The Irish and even the Welsh werelargely pro-Boers, so were some of the most English of the English. No onecould have been more English than Fox, yet he denounced the war withNapoleon. No one could be more English than Cobden, but he denounced thewar in the Crimea. It is really extraordinary to find a united England. Indeed, until lately, it was extraordinary to find a united Englishman. Those of us who, like the present writer, repudiated the South African warfrom its beginnings, had yet a divided heart in the matter, and feltcertain aspects of it as glorious as well as infamous. The first fact I canoffer you is the unquestionable fact that all these doubts and divisionshave ceased. Nor have they ceased by any compromise; but by a universalflash of faith--or, if you will, of suspicion. Nor were our internalconflicts lightly abandoned; nor our reconciliations an easy matter. I am, as you are, a democrat and a citizen of Europe; and my friends and I hadgrown to loathe the plutocracy and privilege which sat in the high placesof our country with a loathing which we thought no love could cast out. Ofthese rich men I will not speak here; with your permission, I will notthink of them. War is a terrible business in any case; and to someintellectual temperaments this is the most terrible part of it. That wartakes the young; that war sunders the lovers; that all over Europe bridesand bridegrooms are parting at the church door: all that is only acommonplace to commonplace people. To give up one's love for one's countryis very great. But to give up one's hate for one's country, this may alsohave in it something of pride and something of purification. What is it that has made the British peoples thus defer not only theirartificial parade of party politics but their real social and moralcomplaints and demands? What is it that has united all of us against thePrussian, as against a mad dog? It is the presence of a certain spirit, asunmistakable as a pungent smell, which we feel is capable of withering allthe good things in this world. The burglary of Belgium, the bribe tobetray France, these are not excuses; they are facts. But they are onlythe facts by which we came to know of the presence of the spirit. They donot suffice to define the whole spirit itself. A good rough summary is tosay that it is the spirit of barbarism; but indeed it is something worse. It is the spirit of second-rate civilisation; and the distinction involvesthe most important differences. Granted that it could exist, pure barbarismcould not last long; as pure babyhood cannot last long. Of his own naturethe baby is interested in the ticking of a watch; and the time will comewhen you will have to tell him, if you only tell him the wrong time. Andthat is exactly what the second-rate civilisation does. But the vital point is here. The abstract barbarian would copy. The cockneyand incomplete civilisation always sets itself up to be copied. And in thecase here considered, the German thinks that it is not only his business tospread education, but to spread compulsory education. "Science combinedwith organisation, " says Professor Ostwald of Berlin University, "makes usterrible to our opponents and ensures a German future for Europe. " That is, as shortly as it can be put, what we are fighting about. We are fighting toprevent a German future for Europe. We think it would be narrower, nastier, less sane, less capable of liberty and of laughter, than any of the worstparts of the European past. And when I cast about for a form in which toexplain shortly why we think so, I thought of you. For this is a matter solarge that I know not how to express it except in terms of artists likeyou, in the service of beauty and the faith in freedom. Prussia, at leastcannot help me; Lord Palmerston, I believe, called it a country of damnedprofessors. Lord Palmerston, I fear, used the word "damned" more or lessflippantly. I use it reverently. Rome, at her very weakest, has always been a river that wanders and widensand that waters many fields. Berlin, at its strongest, will never beanything but a whirlpool, which seeks its own centre, and is sucked down. It would only narrow all the rest of Europe, as it has already narrowed allthe rest of Germany. There is a spirit of diseased egoism, which at lastmakes all things spin upon one pin-point in the brain. It is a spiritexpressed more often in the slangs than in the tongues of men. The Englishcall it a fad. I do not know what the Italians call it; the Prussians callit philosophy. Here is the sort of instance that made me think of you. What would you feelfirst, let us say, if I mentioned Michael Angelo? For the first moment, perhaps, boredom: such as I feel when Americans ask me aboutStratford-on-Avon. But, supposing that just fear quieted, you would feelwhat I and every one else can feel. It might be the sense of the majestichands of Man upon the locks of the last doors of life; large and terriblehands, like those of that youth who poises the stone above Florence, andlooks out upon the circle of the hills. It might be that huge heave offlank and chest and throat in "The Slave, " which is like an earthquakelifting a whole landscape; it might be that tremendous Madonna, whosecharity is more strong than death. Anyhow, your thoughts would be somethingworthy of the man's terrible paganism and his more terrible Christianity. Who but God could have graven Michael Angelo; who came so near to gravingthe Mother of God? German culture deals with the matter as follows:--"Michelangelo Buonarotti(1475-1564). --(=Bernhard) ancestor of the family, lived in Florence about1210. He had two sons, Berlinghieri and Buonarrota. By this name recurringfrequently in later generations, the family came to be called. It is aGerman name, compounded of Bona (=Bohn) and Hrodo, Roto (=Rohde, Rothe)Bona and Rotto are cited as Lombard names. Buonarotti is perhaps the oldLombard Beonrad, corresponding to the word Bonroth. Corresponding names areMackrodt, Osterroth, Leonard. " And so on, and so on, and so on. "In hisface he has always been well-coloured. .. The eyes might be called smallrather than large, of the colour of horn, but variable with 'flecks' ofyellow and blue. Hair and beard are black. These particulars are confirmedby the portraits. First and foremost take the portrait of Bugiardini inMuseo Buonarotti. Here comes to view the 'flecked' appearance of the iris, especially in the right eye. The left may be described as almost whollyblue. " And so on, and so on, and so on. "In the Museo Civico at Pavia, is afresco likeness by an unknown hand, in which this fresh red is distinctlyrecognisable on the face. Taking all these bodily characteristics intoconsideration, it must be said from an anthropological point of view thatthough originally of German family he was a hybrid between the North andWest brunette race. " Would you take the trouble to prove that Michael Angelo was an Italian thatthis man takes to prove that he was a German? Of course not. The onlyimpression this man (who is a recognised Prussian historian) produces onyour mind or mine is that he does not care about Michael Angelo. For you, being an Italian, are therefore something more than an Italian; and I beingan Englishman, something more than an Englishman. But this poor fellowreally cannot be anything more than a Prussian. He digs and digs to finddead Prussians, in the catacombs of Rome or under the ruins of Troy. If hecan find one blue eye lying about somewhere, he is satisfied. He has nophilosophy. He has a hobby, which is collecting Germans. It would probablybe vain for you and me to point out that we could prove anything by thesort of ingenuity which finds the German "rothe" in Buonarotti. We couldhave great fun depriving Germany of all her geniuses in that style. Wecould say that Moltke must have been an Italian, from the old Latin root_mol_--indicating the sweetness of that general's disposition. We might sayBismarck was a Frenchman, since his name begins with the popular theatricalcry of "Bis!" We might say Goethe was an Englishman, because his namebegins with the popular sporting cry "Go!" But the ultimate differencebetween us and the Prussian professor is simply that we are not mad. The father of Frederick the Great, the founder of the more modernHohenzollerns, was mad. His madness consisted of stealing giants; like anunscrupulous travelling showman. Any man much over six foot high, whetherhe were called the Russian Giant or the Irish Giant or the Chinese Giant orthe Hottentot Giant, was in danger of being kidnapped and imprisoned in aPrussian uniform. It is the same mean sort of madness that is working inPrussian professors such as the one I have quoted. They can get no furtherthan the notion of stealing giants. I will not bore you now with all theother giants they have tried to steal; it is enough to say that St. Paul, Leonardo da Vinci, and Shakespeare himself are among the monstrositiesexhibited at Frederick-William fair--on grounds as good as those quotedabove. But I have put this particular case before you, as an artist ratherthan an Italian, to show what I mean when I object to a "German future forEurope. " I object to something which believes very much in itself, and inwhich I do not in the least believe. I object to something which isconceited and small-minded; but which also has that kind of pertinacitywhich always belongs to lunatics. It wants to be able to congratulateitself on Michael Angelo; never to congratulate the world. It is the spiritthat can be seen in those who go bald trying to trace a genealogy; or gobankrupt trying to make out a claim to some remote estate. The Prussian hasthe inconsistency of the _parvenu_; he will labour to prove that he isrelated to some gentleman of the Renaissance, even while he boasts of beingable to "buy him up. " If the Italians were really great, why--they werereally Germans; and if they weren't really Germans, well then, they weren'treally great. It is an occupation for an old maid. Three or four hundred years ago, in the sad silence that had followed thecomparative failure of the noble effort of the Middle Ages, there came uponall Europe a storm out of the south. Its tumult is of many tongues; one canhear in it the laughter of Rabelais, or, for that matter, the lyrics ofShakespeare; but the dark heart of the storm was indeed more austral andvolcanic; a noise of thunderous wings and the name of Michael theArchangel. And when it had shocked and purified the world and passed, aPrussian professor found a feather fallen to earth; and proved (in severalvolumes) that it could only have come from a Prussian Eagle. He had seenone--in a cage. Yours ------, G. K. CHESTERTON. * * * * * My Dear ------ The facts before all Europeans to-day are so fundamental that I still findit easier to talk about them to you as to an old friend, rather than put itin the shape of a pamphlet. In my last letter I pointed out two factswhich are pivots. The first is that, to any really cultured person, Prussiais second-rate. The second is that to almost any Prussian, Prussia isreally first-rate; and is prepared, quite literally, to police the rest ofthe world. For the first matter, the comparative inferiority of German culture cannotbe doubted by people like you. One of the German papers pathetically saidthat, though the mangling of Malines and Rheims was very sad, it was acomfort to think that yet nobler works of art would spring up wherever theGerman culture had passed in triumph. From the point of view of humour, itis really rather sad that they never will. The German Emperor's idea of aGothic cathedral is as provocative to the fancy as Mrs. Todgers' idea of awooden leg. But I think it perfectly probable that they really intended toset up such beautiful buildings as they could. Having been blasphemousenough to ruin such things, they might well be blasphemous enough toreplace them. Even if the Prussian attempt on Paris had not whollycollapsed as it has, I doubt whether the Prussians would have destroyedeverything. I doubt whether they would even have destroyed the Venus deMilo. More probably they would have put a pair of arms on it, designed bysome rising German artist--the Emperor or somebody. And the two arms thusadded would look at once like the arms of a woman at a wash-tub. Thedestroyers of the tower of Rheims are quite capable of destroying the Towerof Giotto. But they are equally capable of the greater crime of completingit. And if they put on a spire, what a spire it would be! What anextinguisher for that clear and almost transparent Christian candle! Haveyou read some of the German explanations of Hamlet? Did I tell you thatLeonardo's hair must have been German hair, because so many of hiscontemporaries said it was beautiful? This is what I call beingsecond-rate. All the German excitement about the colonies of England isonly a half understanding of what was once heroic and is now largelycaddish. The German Emperor's naval vision is a bad copy of Nelson, ascertainly as Frederick the Great's verses were a bad copy of Voltaire. But the second point was even more important; that weak as the thing ismentally it is strong materially; and will impose itself materially if wepermit it. The Prussians have failed in everything else; but they have notfailed in getting their subject thousands to do as they are told. Theycannot put up black and white towers in Florence; but they can really putup black and white posts in Alsace. They have failed in diplomacy. Isuppose it might be called a failure in diplomacy to come into the fightwith two enemies extra and one ally the less. If the Germans, instead ofsending spies to study the Belgian soil, had sent spies to consider theBelgian soul, they would have been saved hard work for a week or two. Theyhave failed in controversy. I suppose it might be called a failure incontroversy to say that England may be keeping her word for some wickedpurpose; while Germany may be breaking her word for some noble purpose. Andthat is practically all that the Germans can manage to say. They say thatwe are an insatiable, unscrupulous, piratical power; and this wild spiritwhirled us into the mad course of respecting a treaty we had signed. Theycan find in us no treason except that we keep our treaties: failing to dothis I call failing in controversy. They have failed in popular persuasion. They have had a very good opportunity. The British Empire does contain manypeople who have been badly treated in various ways: the Irish, the Boers;nay, the Americans themselves, whose national existence began with beingbadly treated. With these the Prussians have done comparatively little; andwith Europeans of your sort nothing. They have never once reallysympathised with the feeling of a Switzer for Switzerland; the feeling of aNorwegian for Norway; the feeling of a Tuscan for Tuscany. Even whennations are neutral, Prussia can hardly bear them to be patriotic. Evenwhen they are courting every one else they can praise no one butthemselves. They fail in diplomacy, they fail in debate, they fail even indemagogy. They have stupid plots, stupid explanations, and even stupidapologies. But there is one thing they really do not fail in. They do notfail in finding people stupid enough to carry them out. Now, it is this question I would ask you to consider; you, as a good middletype of the Latins, a Liberal but a Catholic, an artist but a soldier. Thedanger to the whole civilisation of which Rome was the fountain lies inthis. That the more this strange Pruss people fail in all the other things, the more they will fall back on this mere fact of a brutal obedience. Theywill give orders; they have nothing else to give. I say that this is thequestion for you; I do not say, I do not dream of saying, that the answeris for me. It is for you to weigh the chance that their very failures inthe arts of peace will drive them back upon the arts of war. They couldnot, and they did not, dupe your people in diplomacy. They did the mostundiplomatic thing that can be done; they concealed a breach of partnershipwithout even concealing the concealment. They instigated the intrigue inAustria in such a way that Italy could honestly claim all the freedom ofpast ignorance, combined with all the disillusionment of present knowledge. They so ran the Triple Alliance that they had to admit your grievance, atthe very moment when they claimed your aid. The English are stupider andless sensitive than you are; but even the English found the GermanChancellor's diplomacy not insinuating but simply insulting; I swear Iwould be a better diplomatist myself. In the same way, there is no dangerof people like you being corrupted in controversy. There is no fear thatthe professors who pullulate all over the Baltic Plain will overcome theLatins in logic. Some of them even claim to be super-logical; and say theyare too big for syllogisms; generally having found even one syllogism toobig for them. If they complain either of your abstention from their causeor your adhesion to any other, you have an unanswerable answer. You willsay, as you did say, that you did not break the Triple Alliance, even forthe sake of peace. It was they who broke it for the sake of war. You, obviously, had as much right to be consulted about Servia as Austria had;and on the mere chess-board of argument it is mate in one move. Nor arethey in the least fitted to make an appeal to the popular sentiment of yourpeople. The English, I dare say, and the French, have talked an amazingamount of nonsense about you; but they understand a little better. They donot write exactly like this, which is from the most public and acceptedPrussian political philosopher (Chamberlain). "Who can live in Italyto-day and mix with its amiable and highly gifted inhabitants withoutfeeling with pain that here a great nation is lost, irredeemably lost, because it lacks the inner driving power, " etc. , which has brought VonKluck so triumphantly through Paris. Even a half-educated Englishman, whohas heard of no Italian poet except Dante, knows that he was something morethan amiable. Even a positively illiterate Frenchman, who has heard of noItalian warrior except Napoleon, knows that it was not in "inner drivingforce" that the artilleryman in question was deficient. "Who can live inItaly to-day?" Evidently the Prussian philosopher can't. His impressionsare taken from Italian operas; not from Italian streets; certainly not fromItalian fields. As a matter of fact such images of Italy as burn in thememories of most open-minded Northerners who have been there, are ofexactly the other kind. I for one should be inclined to say, "Who can livein Italy to-day without feeling that a woman feeding children, or a manchopping wood, may almost touch him with fear with the fulness of theirhumanity: so that he can almost smell blood, as one smells burning?"Italians often look lazy; that is, they look as if they would not move; butnot as if they could not move, as many Germans do. But even though thisformula fitted the Italians, it seems scarcely calculated to please them. For the Prussians, then, with the failure of their diplomacy, the failureof their philosophy, we may also place the failure of their appeals to aforeign people. The Prussian writer may continue his attempts to sootheand charm you by telling you that you are irredeemably lost, and that allgreat Italians must have been something else. But the method seems to meill adapted to popular propaganda; and I cannot but say that on this thirdpoint of persuasion, the German attempt is not striking. Now all this is important for this reason. If you consider it carefullyyou will see why Europe must, at whatever cost, break Germany in battle:and put an end to her military and material power to _do_ things. If we allhave to fight for it, if we all have to die for it, it must be done. If wefind allies in the dwarfs of Greenland or the giants of Patagonia, it mustbe done. And the reason is that unless it is literally and materially done, other things will be literally and materially done; and horrify theheavens. They will be silly things; they will be benighted and limited andlaughable things; but they will be accomplished things. Nothing could bemore ridiculous, if that is all, than the moral position of the Prussian inPoland; where a magnificent officer, making a vast parade of "ruling, "tries to cheat poor peasants out of their fields (and gets cheated) andthen takes refuge in beating little boys for saying their prayers in theirnative tongue. All who remember anything of dignity, of irony, in short ofRome and reason, can see why an officer need not, should not, had betternot, and generally does not, beat little boys. But an officer _can_ beatlittle boys: and a Prussian officer will go on doing it until you take awaythe stick. Nothing could be more comic, if that is all, than the positionof Prussians in Alsace: which they declare to be purely German and admit tobe furiously French; so that they have to terrorise it by sabring anybody, including cripples. Again, any of us can see why an officer need not, should not, had better not, and generally does not, sabre a cripple. But anofficer _can_ sabre a cripple; and a Prussian officer will go on doing ituntil you take away the sabre. It is this insane and rigid realism thatmakes their case peculiar: like that of a Chinaman copying something, or ahalf-witted servant taking a message. If they had the power to put blackand white posts round the grave of Virgil, or dig up Dante to see if he hadyellow hair, the mere _doing_ of it which for some of us would be the mostunlikely, would for them be the least unlikely thing. They do not hear thelaughter of the ages. If they had the power to treat the English or ItalianPremier quite literally as a traitor, and shoot him against a wall, theyare quite capable of turning such hysterical rhetoric into reality: andscattering his brains before they had collected their own. They do not feelatmospheres. They are all a little deaf; as they are all a littleshort-sighted. They are annoyed when their enemies, after such experiencesas those of Belgium, accuse them of breaking their promises. And in onesense they are right; for there are some sorts of promises they probablywould keep. If they have promised to respect a free country, or an oldfriend, to observe a sworn partnership, or to spare a harmless population, they will find such restrictions chilling and irksome. They will ask someprofessor on what principle they are discarding it. But if they havepromised to shoot the cross off a church spire, or empty the inkpot intosomebody's beer, or bring home somebody's ears in their pocket for thepleasure of their families, I think in these cases they would feel a sortof a shadow of what civilised men feel in the fulfilment of a promise, asdistinct from the making of it. And, in consideration of such cases, Icannot go the whole length of those severe critics who say that a Prussianwill never keep his promise. Unfortunately, it is precisely this sort of actuality and fulfilment thatmakes it urgent that Europe should put forth her whole energy to drag downthese antique demoniacs; these idiots filled with force as by fiends. They_will_ do things, as a maniac will, until he cannot do them. To me itseemed that some things could not be said and done. I thought a man wouldhave been ashamed to bribe a new enemy like England to betray an old enemylike France. I thought a man would have been ashamed to punish the pureself-defence of folk so offenceless as the Belgians. These hopes must gofrom us, my friend. There is only one thing of which the Prussian would beashamed; and of that, we have sworn to God, he shall taste before the end. * * * * * My Dear ------ The Prussianised German, of whatever blend of races he may be, has onequality which may perhaps be racially simple; but which is, at any rate, very plain. Chamberlain, the German philosopher or historian (I know notwhich to call him or how to call him either) remarks somewhere thatpurebred races possess fidelity; he instances the negro and the dog--and, Isuppose, the German. Anyhow, it is true that there is a recognisable andreal thing which might be called fidelity (or perhaps monotony) whichexists in Germans in about the same style as in dogs and niggers. The NorthTeuton really has in this respect the simplicities of the savage and thelower animals; that he has no reactions. He does not laugh at himself. Hedoes not want to kick himself. He does not, like most of us, repent--oroccasionally even repent of repenting. He does not read his own works andfind them much worse or much better than he had expected. He does not feela faint irrational sense of debauch, after even divine pleasures of thislife. Watch him at a German restaurant, and you will satisfy yourself thathe does not. In short, both in the most scientific and in the most casualsense of the word, he does not know what it is to have a _temper_. He doesnot bend and fly back like steel; he sticks out, like wood. In this hediffers from any nation I have known, from your nation and mine, from theFrench, the Spanish, the Scotch, the Welsh and the Irish. Bad luck neverbraces him as it does us. Good luck never frightens him as it does us. Itcan be seen in what the French call Chauvinism and we call Jingoism. For usit is fireworks; for him it is daylight. On Mafeking Night, celebrating asmall but picturesque success against the Boers, nearly everybody in Londoncame out waving little flags. Nearly everybody in London is now heartilyashamed of it. But it would never occur to the Prussians not to ride theirhigh horses with the freshest insolence for the far-off victory of Sedan;though on that very anniversary the star of their fate had turned scornfulin the sky, and Von Kluck was in retreat from Paris. Above all, thePrussian does not feel annoyed, as I do, when foreigners praise his countryfor all the wrong reasons. The Prussian will allow you to praise him forany reasons, for any length of time, for any eternity of folly; he is thereto be praised. Probably he is proud of this; probably he thinks he has agood digestion, because the poison of praise does not make him sick. Hethinks the absence of such doubt, or self-knowledge, makes for composure, grandeur, a colossal calm, a superior race--in short, the whole claim ofthe Teutons to be the highest spiritual product of Nature and Evolution. But as I have noticed a calm unity even more complete, not only in dogs andnegroes, but in slugs, slow-worms, mangoldwurzels, moss, mud and bits ofstone, I am a sceptic about this test for the marshalling in rank of allthe children of God. Now I point this out to you here for a very practicalreason. The Prussian will never understand revolutions--which aregenerally reactions. He regards them, not only with dislike, but with amysterious kind of pity. Throughout his confused popular histories, thereruns a strange suggestion that civic populations have failed hitherto, andfailed because they were always fighting. The population of Berlin does notfight, or can't; and therefore Berlin will succeed where Greece and Romehave failed. Hitherto it is plain enough that Berlin has succeeded innothing except in bad copies of Greece and Rome; and Prussians would bewiser to discuss the details of the Greek and Roman past, which we canfollow, rather than the details of their own future, about which we arenaturally not so well informed. Well, every dome they build, every pillarthey put upright, every pedestal for epitaph or panel for decoration, everytype of church, Catholic or Protestant, every kind of street, large orsmall, they have copied from the old Pagan or Catholic cities; and thosecities, when they made those things, were boiling with revolutions. Iremember a German professor saying to me, "I should have no scruple aboutextinguishing such republics as Brazil, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua; theyare perpetually rioting for one thing or another. " I said I supposed hewould have had no scruple in extinguishing Athens, Rome, Florence andParis; for they were always rioting for one thing or another. His replyindicated, I thought, that he felt about Cæsar or Rienzi very much as theScotch Presbyterian Minister felt about Christ, when he was reminded of thecorn-plucking on the Sabbath, and said, "Weel, I dinna think the better ofhim. " In other words he was quite positive, like all his countrymen, thathe could impose a sort of Pax Germanica, which would satisfy all the needsof order and of freedom forever; leaving no need for revolutions orreactions. I am myself of a different opinion. When I was a child, when thetoy-trade of Germany had begun to flood this country, there was a priggishBritish couplet, engraven on the minds of governesses, which ran-- What the German children delight to make The English children delight to break. I can answer for the delight of the English children; a just and godlikedelight. I am not so sure about the delight of the German children, whenthey were caught in the infernal wheels of the modern civilisation offactories. But, for the present, I am only concerned to say that I do notaccept this line of historical division. I do not think history supportsthe view that those who could break things could not make them. This is the least intrusive approach by which I can touch on a topic thatmust of necessity be a delicate one; yet which may well be a difficultyamong Latins like yourself. Against this preposterous Prussian upstart wehave not only to protect our unity; we have even to protect our quarrels. And the deepest of the reactions or revolts of which I have spoken is thequarrel which (very tragically as I think) has for some hundred yearscloven the Christian from the Liberal ideal. It would ill become me, inwhose country there is neither such clear doctrine nor such combativedemocracy, to suppose it can be easy for any of you to close up such sacredwounds. There must still be Catholics who feel they can never forgive aJacobin. There must still be old Republicans who feel that they could neverendure a priest. And yet there is something, the mere sight of which shouldlock them both in an instant alliance. They have only to look northward andhold the third thing, which thinks itself superior to either: the enormousturnip-face of _ce type là_, as the French say, who conceives that he canmake them both like himself and yet remain superior to both. I implore you to keep out of the hands of this Fool the quarrel of thegreat saints and of the great blasphemers. He will do to religion what hewill do to art; mix up all the colours on your palette into the colour ofmud: and then say that only the purified eyes of Teutons can see that it ispure white. The other day the Director of Museums in Berlin was said to besetting about the creation of a new kind of Art: German Art. Philosophersand men of science were at the same time directed to meet round the tableand found a new Religion: German Religion. How can such people appreciateart; how can they appreciate religion--nay, how can they appreciateirreligion? How does one invent a message? How does one create a Creator?Is it not the plain meaning of the Gospel that it is good news? And is itnot the plain meaning of good news that it must come from outside oneself?Otherwise I could make myself happy this moment, by inventing an enormousvictory in Flanders. And I suppose (now I come to think of it) that theGermans do. By the fulness of your faith and even the fulness of your despair, you thatremember Rome, have earned a right to prevent all our quarrels beingquenched in such cold water from the north. But it is not too much to saythat neither religion at its worst nor republicanism at its worst everoffered the coarse insult to all mankind that is offered by this new andnakedly universal monarchy. There has always been something common to civilised men, whether theycalled it being merely a citizen; or being merely a sinner. There hasalways been something which your ancestors called _Verecundia_; which is atonce humility and dignity. Whatever our faults, we do not do exactly asthe Prussians do. We do not bellow day and night to draw attention to ourown stern silence. We do not praise ourselves solely because nobody elsewill praise us. I, for one, say at the end of these letters, as I said atthe beginning; that in these international matters I have often differedfrom my countrymen; I have often differed from myself. I shall not claimthe completeness of this silly creature we discuss. I shall not answer hisboasts with boasts; but with blows. My front-door is beaten in and broken down suddenly. I see nothing outside, except a sort of smiling, straw-haired commercial traveller with a notebookopen, who says, "Excuse me, I am a faultless being, I have persuadedPoland; I can count on my respectful Allies in Alsace. I am simply loved inLorraine. _Quae reggio in terris_ . .. What place is there on earth wherethe name of Prussia is not the signal for hopeful prayers and joyfuldances? I am that German who has civilised Belgium; and delicately trimmedthe frontiers of Denmark. And I may tell you, with the fulness ofconviction, that I have never failed, and shall never fail in anything. Permit me, therefore, to bless your house by the passage of my beautifulboots; that I may burgle the house next door. " And then something European that is prouder than pride will rise up in me;and I shall answer:-- "I am that Englishman who has tortured Ireland, who has been tortured bySouth Africa; who knows all his mistakes, who is heavy with all his sins. And he tells you, Faultless Being, with a truth as deep as his own guilt, and as deathless as his own remembrance, that you shall not pass this way. "