moment a hireling army any more than it is a conscript army. It is a
volunteer army in the strict sense of the word; nor do I object to your
calling it an amateur army. There is no compulsion, and there is next to
no pay. It is at this moment drawn from every class of the community,
and there are very few classes which would not earn a little more money
in their ordinary trades. It numbers very nearly as many men as it would
if it were a conscript army; that is with the necessary margin of men
unable to serve or needed to serve otherwise. Ours is a country in which
that democratic spirit which is common to Christendom is rather
unusually sluggish and far below the surface. And the most genuine and
purely popular movement that we have had since the Chartists has been
the enlistment for this war. By all means say that such vague and
sentimental volunteering is valueless in war if you think so; or even
if you don't think so. By all means say that Germany is unconquerable
and that we cannot really kill you. But if you say that we do not really
want to kill you, you do us an injustice. You do indeed.

I need not consider the yet crazier things that some of you have said;
as that the English intend to keep Calais and fight France as well as
Germany for the privilege of purchasing a frontier and the need to keep
a conscript army. That, also, is out of books, and pretty mouldy old
books at that. It was said, I suppose, to gain sympathy among the
French, and is therefore not my immediate business, as they are
eminently capable of looking after themselves. I merely drop one word in
passing, lest you waste your powerful intellect on such projects. The
English may some day forgive you; the French never will. You Teutons are
too light and fickle to understand the Latin seriousness. My only
concern is to point out that about England, at least, you are invariably
and miraculously wrong.