know, that the day when decency and civilization are trampled under the
foot of the brute is a day when it is good to die.

When I speak of the German nation as the brute I am not speaking
controversially or rhetorically; the whole German nation has given its
hearty assent to a brutal doctrine of war and politics; no facts need be
disputed between us: what to us is their shame, to them is their glory.
This is a grave difference; yet it would be wrong to suppose that we can
treat it adequately by condemning the whole German nation as a nation of
confessed criminals. It is the paradox of war that there is always right
on both sides. When a man is ready and willing to sacrifice his life,
you cannot deny him the right to choose what he will die for. The most
beautiful virtues, faith and courage and devotion, grow like weeds upon
the battle-field. The fighters recognize these virtues in each other,
and the front lines, for all their mud and slaughter, are breathed on by
the airs of heaven. Hate and pusillanimity have little there to nourish
them. To find the meaner passions you must seek further back. Johnson,
speaking in the _Idler_ of the calamities produced by war, admits that
he does not know 'whether more is to be dreaded from streets filled with
soldiers accustomed to plunder, or from garrets filled with scribblers
accustomed to lie'. Now that our army is the nation in arms, the danger
from a lawless soldiery has become less, or has vanished; but the other
danger has increased. Journalists are not the only offenders. It is a
strange, squalid background for the nobility of the soldier that is made
by the deceits and boasts of diplomatists and statesmen. In one of the
prison camps of England, some weeks ago, I saw a Saxon boy who had
fought bravely for his country. Simplicity and openness and loyalty were
written on his face. There are hundreds like him, and I would not
mention him if it were not that that same day I read with a new and
heightened sense of disgust a speech by the German Chancellor, writhing