about, and which Cramb and Bernhardi make so interesting and
understandable, is here on the spot not so easy to put one's finger on.
Apparently nobody ever heard of Bernhardi, and you might talk with every
man you meet for a fortnight without finding any one who could tell you
--as any young girl who happens to sit next you at dinner can tell you at
home--about the German belief in war as a great blessing, because it is
the only way of asserting your own superior ideas over the other man's
inferior ideas, and thus getting a world ahead.

People want to smash England, of course, because, as they explain, she
brought on the war and is trying to starve them, and they roar with the
applause when the lightning-change man at the Wintergarten impersonates
Hindenburg, because Hindenburg is a grand old scout who is keeping those
millions of slovenly Russians from overrunning our tidy, busy,
well-ordered Germany. But Treitschke--who was he?

And then, of course, it is not always easy to put one's finger on just
what people mean by militarism. Some have objected to militarism
because they didn't like the manners of the German waiters at the Savoy,
and some because--"Well, those people somehow rub you the wrong way!" It
is not universal conscription, because many nations have that, nor the
amount spent per capita on soldiers and ships, for we ourselves spend
almost as much as the Germans, and the French even more.

One of our old-school cattlemen, used to shooting all the game, cutting
all the timber, and using all the water he wanted to, would doubtless
say, without seeing a soldier, that it was "their damned police!" No,
when people think they are talking about German militarism, they are
quite as likely to be talking about the way German faces are made or
about German collectivism--the uncanny ability Germans have for taking