glad enough of a rest. Nations are like bees: they cannot kill except at
the cost of their own lives.

The question of terms will raise a fierce controversy. At the extremes
of our public opinion we have two temperaments, first, our gentlemen,
our sportsmen, our daredevils, our _preux chevaliers_. To these the
notion of reviling your enemy when he is up; kicking him when he is
knocked down by somebody else; and gouging out his eyes, cutting out his
tongue, hewing off his right arm, and stealing all his money, is
abhorrent and cowardly. These gallants say, "It is not enough that we
can fight Germany to-day. We can fight her any day and every day. Let
her come again and again and yet again. We will fight her one to three;
and if she comes on ten to one, as she did at Mons, we will mill on the
retreat, and drive her back again when we have worn her down to our
weight. If her fleet will not come out to fight us because we have too
many ships, we will send all the odds in our favour back to Portsmouth
and fight ship to ship in the North Sea, and let the bravest and best
win." That is how gallant fighters talk, and how Drake is popularly
(though erroneously) supposed to have tackled the Armada.


*The Ignoble Attitude of Cruel Panic.*

But we are not all _preux chevaliers._ We have at the other extremity
the people who are craving for loot and vengeance, who clamour for the
humiliation and torture of the enemy, who rave against the village
burnings and shootings by the Prussians in one column and exult in the
same proceedings by the Russians in another, who demand that German
prisoners of war shall be treated as criminals, who depict our Indian
troops as savage cutthroats because they like to think of their enemies