who have seldom seen each other's faces, and never been tinged with each
other's blood. Here we still find the same unvarying Prussian principle.
Any European might feel a genuine fear of the Yellow Peril; and many
Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Russians have felt and expressed it. Many might
say, and have said, that the Heathen Chinee is very heathen indeed; that if
he ever advances against us he will trample and torture and utterly
destroy, in a way that Eastern people do, but Western people do not. Nor do
I doubt the German Emperor's sincerity when he sought to point out to us
how abnormal and abominable such a nightmare campaign would be, supposing
that it could ever come. But now comes the comic irony; which never fails
to follow on the attempt of the Prussian to be philosophic. For the Kaiser,
after explaining to his troops how important it was to avoid Eastern
Barbarism, instantly commanded them to become Eastern Barbarians. He told
them, in so many words, to be Huns: and leave nothing living or standing
behind them. In fact, he frankly offered a new army corps of aboriginal
Tartars to the Far East, within such time as it may take a bewildered
Hanoverian to turn into a Tartar. Any one who has the painful habit of
personal thought, will perceive here at once the non-reciprocal principle
again. Boiled down to its bones of logic, it means simply this: "I am a
German and you are a Chinaman. Therefore I, being a German, have a right
to be a Chinaman. But you have no right to be a Chinaman; because you are
only a Chinaman." This is probably the highest point to which the German
culture has risen.

The principle here neglected, which may be called Mutuality by those who
misunderstand and dislike the word Equality, does not offer so clear a
distinction between the Prussian and the other peoples as did the first
Prussian principle of an infinite and destructive opportunism; or, in other
words, the principle of being unprincipled. Nor upon this second can one
take up so obvious a position touching the other civilisations or