an Englishman's rudeness is often rooted in his being embarrassed. But
a German's rudeness is rooted in his never being embarrassed. He eats
and makes love noisily. He never feels a speech or a song or a sermon or
a large meal to be what the English call "out of place" in particular
circumstances. When Germans are patriotic and religious, they have no
reaction against patriotism and religion as have the English and the
French.

Nay, the mistake of Germany in the modern disaster largely arose from the
facts that she thought England was simple, when England is very subtle.
She thought that because our politics have become largely financial that
they had become wholly financial; that because our aristocrats had become
pretty cynical that they had become entirely corrupt. They could not seize
the subtlety by which a rather used-up English gentleman might sell a
coronet when he would not sell a fortress; might lower the public standards
and yet refuse to lower the flag.

In short, the Germans are quite sure that they understand us entirely,
because they do not understand us at all. Possibly if they began to
understand us they might hate us even more: but I would rather be hated for
some small but real reason, than pursued with love on account of all kinds
of qualities which I do not possess and which I do not desire. And when the
Germans get their first genuine glimpse of what modern England is like,
they will discover that England has a very broken, belated and inadequate
sense of having an obligation to Europe, but no sort of sense whatever of
having any obligation to Teutonism.

This is the last and strongest of the Prussian qualities we have here
considered. There is in stupidity of this sort a strange slippery
strength: because it can be not only outside rules but outside reason. The