"You have probably heard a rumour that we and our Allies have no
quarrel with the German people, but only with its rulers. Don't you
believe a word of it. Possibly we still respected you when the War
began, for we had not guessed how many of you had been looking forward
for years to the coming of 'The Day.' It is what we have found out
about you since you started fighting that has made us loathe and
despise you.

"When, as a nation, you accepted without protest the filthy savagery
of your armies in Belgium and other occupied lands; when even your
women were vile in their cruelty to the helpless prisoners you had
taken; when you rang your church bells and waved flags and took
holidays for joy of the murder of innocent women and children, we were
not deceived by apologists who explained that your only defect was
that you were the slaves of a brutal militarism (though you were that,
all right). We knew that you must have something of the beast in your
hearts. How it got there was another matter; we only knew that it was
there and that while it remained you were not fit for intercourse with
decent men.

"Another thing that you may have heard (for even some of our own
statesmen, reputed intelligent, have said it, and it has no doubt been
eagerly seized upon by the officials who control your Press), is that
your form of Government, the particular pattern of tyranny under which
you elect to grovel, is no concern of ours. Well, don't you believe
that either. This is no question of private taste, like the cut of
your shoulder-pads or the shape of your women's waists, which are
matters of purely local interest. Your type of Government is as much
our concern; as the quality of your poison-gas or the composition of
the bombs that you drop on our babies.