any German books that seemed likely to illuminate the mystery of this
amazing concentration of hostility; the works of Bernhardi, Treitschke,
Nietzsche, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, became the material of countless
articles and interminable discussions. One saw little clerks on the way
to the office and workmen going home after their work earnestly reading
these remarkable writers. They were asking, just as Mr. Britling was
asking, what it was the British Empire had struck against. They were
trying to account for this wild storm of hostility that was coming at
them out of Central Europe.

It was a natural next stage to this, when after all it became manifest
that instead of there being a liberal and reluctant Germany at the back
of imperialism and Junkerdom, there was apparently one solid and
enthusiastic people, to suppose that the Germans were in some
distinctive way evil, that they were racially more envious, arrogant,
and aggressive than the rest of mankind. Upon that supposition a great
number of English people settled. They concluded that the Germans had a
peculiar devil of their own--and had to be treated accordingly. That was
the second stage in the process of national apprehension, and it was
marked by the first beginnings of a spy hunt, by the first denunciation
of naturalised aliens, and by some anti-German rioting among the mixed
alien population in the East End. Most of the bakers in the East End of
London were Germans, and for some months after the war began they went
on with their trade unmolested. Now many of these shops were wrecked....
It was only in October that the British gave these first signs of a
sense that they were fighting not merely political Germany but the
Germans.

But the idea of a peculiar malignity in the German quality as a key to
the broad issue of the war was even less satisfactory and less permanent