altogether the day of obligation. The Prussians have been told by their
literary men that everything depends upon Mood: and by their politicians
that all arrangements dissolve before "necessity." That is the importance
of the German Chancellor's phrase. He did not allege some special excuse in
the case of Belgium, which might make it seem an exception that proved the
rule. He distinctly argued, as on a principle applicable to other cases,
that victory was a necessity and honour was a scrap of paper. And it is
evident that the half-educated Prussian imagination really cannot get any
further than this. It cannot see that if everybody's action were entirely
incalculable from hour to hour, it would not only be the end of all
promises, but the end of all projects. In not being able to see that, the
Berlin philosopher is really on a lower mental level than the Arab who
respects the salt, or the Brahmin who preserves the caste. And in this
quarrel we have a right to come with scimitars as well as sabres, with bows
as well as rifles, with assegai and tomahawk and boomerang, because there
is in all these at least a seed of civilisation that these intellectual
anarchists would kill. And if they should find us in our last stand girt
with such strange swords and following unfamiliar ensigns, and ask us for
what we fight in so singular a company, we shall know what to reply: "We
fight for the trust and for the tryst; for fixed memories and the possible
meeting of men; for all that makes life anything but an uncontrollable
nightmare. We fight for the long arm of honour and remembrance; for all
that can lift a man above the quicksands of his moods, and give him the
mastery of time."



II

THE REFUSAL OF RECIPROCITY