easily remedied once it is pointed out. Their title to existence is so
clear to themselves that they are convinced it will be universally
recognized; it must not be made a matter of international conflict.
Partly, no doubt, this belief is fostered by lack of imagination. The
sheltered conditions and leisured life which they enjoy as the parasites
of a dominant race have produced in them a false sense of security. But
there is something also of the English strength and obstinacy of
character in their self-confidence, and if ever Germany were to conquer
England some of them would spring to their full stature as the heroes of
an age-long and indomitable resistance. They are not held in much esteem
to-day among their own people; they are useless for the work in hand;
and their credit has suffered from the multitude of pretenders who make
principle a cover for cowardice. But for all that, they are kin to the
makers of England, and the fact that Germany would never tolerate them
for an instant is not without its lesson.

We shall never understand the Germans. Some of their traits may possibly
be explained by their history. Their passionate devotion to the State,
their amazing vulgarity, their worship of mechanism and mechanical
efficiency, are explicable in a people who are not strong in individual
character, who have suffered much to achieve union, and who have
achieved it by subordinating themselves, soul and body, to a brutal
taskmaster. But the convulsions of war have thrown up things that are
deeper than these, primaeval things, which, until recently, civilization
was believed to have destroyed. The old monstrous gods who gave their
names to the days of the week are alive again in Germany. The English
soldier of to-day goes into action with the cold courage of a man who is
prepared to make the best of a bad job. The German soldier sacrifices
himself, in a frenzy of religious exaltation, to the War-God. The
filthiness that the Germans use, their deliberate befouling of all that