and stated that she would very gladly put herself at the head of such a
League. I can hardly help loving the Germans when their rustic
simplicity and rustic cunning lead them all unconsciously into
self-revelation. The very idea of a League to Enforce Peace implies
equality among the contracting parties; and Germany does not understand
equality. 'By all means', she says,'let us sit at a round table, and I
will sit at the top of it.' Her panacea for human ills is Germanism. She
has nothing to offer but a purely national sentiment, which some,
greatly privileged, may share, and the rest must revere and bow to. In
the Book of Genesis we are told how Joseph was thrown into a pit by his
elder brothers for talking just like this; but he meant it quite
innocently, and so do the Germans. They do not intend irreverence to God
when they call Him the good German God. On the contrary, they choose for
His praise a word that to them stands for all goodness and all
greatness. Their worship expresses itself naturally in the tribal ritual
and the tribal creed. This tribal creed, there can be no doubt, is what
they offer us for a talisman to ensure the right ordering of the world.

Patriotism and loyalty to hearth and home are passions so strong in
humanity that a creed like this, when men are under its influence, is
not easily seen to be absurd. The Saxon boy, whom I saw in his prison
camp, probably would not quarrel with it. And even in the wider world of
thought the illusions of nationalism are all-pervading. I once heard
Professor Henry Sidgwick remark that it is not easy for us to understand
how the troops of Portugal are stirred to heroic effort when their
commanders call on them to remember that they are Portuguese. He would
no doubt have been the first to admit, for he had an alert and sceptical
mind, that it is only our stupidity which finds anything comic in such
an appeal. But it is stupidity of this kind which unfits men to deal
with other races, and it is stupidity of this kind which has been