subject.

"Have you been in Germany lately, Nigel?" she enquired.

"Not for many years," he answered.

She stretched herself out upon the couch and lit a cigarette.

"The Germany of before the war of course I can't remember," she said
pensively. "I imagine, however, that there was a sort of instinctive
jealous dislike towards England and everything English, simply because
England had had a long start in colonisation, commerce and all the rest
of it. But the feeling in Germany now, although it is marvellously
hidden, is something perfectly amazing. It absolutely vibrates wherever
you go. The silence makes it all the more menacing. Soon after I got to
Berlin, I bought a copy of the Treaty of Peace and read it. Nigel, was
it necessary to have been so bitterly cruel to a beaten enemy?"

"Logically it would seem not," Nigel admitted. "Actually, we cannot put
ourselves back into the spirit of those days. You must remember that it
was an unprovoked war, a war engineered by Germany for the sheer
purposes of aggression. That is why a punitive spirit entered into our
subsequent negotiations."

She nodded.

"I expect history will tell us some day," she continued, "that we needed
a great statesman of the Beaconsfield type at the Peace table. However,
that is all ended. They sowed the seed at Versailles, and I think we are
going to reap the harvest."