more ruinous than the craze for drink; when he can afford
secondary education for his sons you find three out of every five
of them with their minds lamed for life by examinations which
only a thoroughly wooden head could go through with impunity; and
if a king is patriotic and respectable (few kings are) he puts up
statues to him and exalts him above Charlemagne and Henry the
Fowler. And when he meets a man of genius, he instinctively
insults him, starves him, and, if possible, imprisons and kills
him.

Now I do not pretend to be perfect myself. Heaven knows I have to
struggle hard enough every day with what the Germans call my higher
impulses. I know too well the temptation to be moral, to be
self-sacrificing, to be loyal and patriotic, to be respectable and
well-spoken of. But I wrestle with it and--as far as human fraility
will allow--conquer it, whereas the German abandons himself to it
without scruple or reflection, and is actually proud of his pious
intemperance and self-indulgence. Nothing will cure him of this
mania. It may end in starvation, crushing taxation, suppression of
all freedom to try new social experiments and reform obsolete
institutions, in snobbery, jobbery, idolatry, and an omnipresent
tyranny in which his doctor and his schoolmaster, his lawyer and
his priest, coerce him worse than any official or drill sergeant:
no matter: it is respectable, says the German, therefore it must
be good, and cannot be carried too far; and everybody who rebels
against it must be a rascal. Even the Social-Democrats in Germany
differ from the rest only in carrying academic orthodoxy beyond
human endurance--beyond even German endurance. I am a Socialist
and a Democrat myself, the hero of a hundred platforms, one of the
leaders of the most notable Socialist organizations in England. I am