concerned in it as much as we are), they will not deal with us as the
lovable and innocent victims of a treacherous tyrant and a savage
soldiery. They will have to consider how these two incorrigibly
pugnacious and inveterately snobbish peoples, who have snarled at one
another for forty years with bristling hair and grinning fangs, and are
now rolling over with their teeth in one another's throats, are to be
tamed into trusty watch-dogs of the peace of the world. I am sorry to
spoil the saintly image with a halo which the British Jingo journalist
sees just now when he looks in the glass; but it must be done if we are
to behave reasonably in the imminent day of reckoning.

And now back to Friedrich von Bernhardi.


*General Von Bernhardi.*

Like many soldier-authors, Friedrich is very readable; and he maintains
the good and formidable part of the Bismarck tradition: that is, he is
not a humbug. He looks facts in the face; he deceives neither himself
nor his readers; and if he were to tell lies--as he would no doubt do as
stoutly as any British, French, or Russian officer if his country's
safety were at stake--he would know that he was telling them. Which last
we think very bad taste on his part, if not downright wickedness.

It is true that he cites Frederick the Great as an exemplary master of
war and of _Weltpolitik_. But his chief praise in this department is
reserved for England. It is from our foreign policy, he says, that he
has learnt what our journalists denounce as "the doctrine of the bully,
of the materialist, of the man with gross ideals: a doctrine of
diabolical evil." He frankly accepts that doctrine from us (as if our