must know what we have believed. What do we stand for in this war? It is
only the immovable conviction that we stand for something ultimate and
essential that can help us and carry us through. No war of this kind and
on this scale is good enough to fight unless it is good enough to fail
in. 'The calculation of profit', said Burke,'in all such wars is false.
On balancing the account of such wars, ten thousand hogs-heads of sugar
are purchased at ten thousand times their price. The blood of man should
never be shed but to redeem the blood of man. It is well shed for our
family, for our friends, for our God, for our country, for our kind. The
rest is vanity; the rest is crime.'

The question I have asked is a difficult question to answer, or, rather,
the answer is not easy to formulate briefly and clearly. Most of the men
at the front know quite well what they are fighting for; they know that
it is for their country, but that it is also for their kind--for certain
ideals of humanity. We at home know that we are at war for liberty and
humanity. But these words are invoked by different nations in different
senses; the Germans, or at least most of them, have as much liberty as
they desire, and believe that the highest good of humanity is to be
found in the prevalence of their own ideas and of their own type of
government and society. No abstract demonstration can help us. Liberty
is a highly comparative notion; no one asks for it complete. Humanity is
a highly variable notion; it is interpreted in different senses by
different societies. What we are confronted by is two types of
character, two sets of aims, two ideals for society. There can be no
harm in trying to understand both.

The Germans can never be understood by those who neglect their history.
They are a solid, brave, and earnest people, who, till quite recent
times, have been denied their share in the government of Europe. In the