say, for the cure, or at least the mitigation, of the specific bad
habits which finally caused the madness of Germany."

"Please tell us, sir," asked Dick gravely, "how you mean us to
take that. Do you really think it would have done any good to those
brutes who ravaged Belgium and outraged France to read Tacitus or
Virgil or the Greek tragedies? They couldn't have done it, anyhow."

"Probably not," answered the professor, while Hardman sat staring
intently into the fire, "probably not. But suppose the leaders
and guides of Germany (her masters, in effect, who moulded and
_kultured_ the people to serve their nefarious purpose of
dominating the world by violence), suppose these masters had really
known the meaning and felt the truth of the Greek tragedies, which
unveil reckless arrogance--_Hybris_--as the fatal sin,
hateful to the gods and doomed to an inevitable Nemesis. Might not
this truth, filtering through the masters to the people, have led
them to the abatement of the ruinous pride which sent Germany out
to subjugate the other nations in 1914? The egregious General von
der Goltz voiced the insane arrogance which made this war when he
said, 'The nineteenth century saw a German Empire, the twentieth
shall see a German world.'

"Or suppose the Teutonic teachers and pastors had read with
understanding and taken to heart the passages of Csesar in which he
curtly describes the violent and thievish qualities of the ancient
Germans--how they spread desolation around them to protect their
borders, and encouraged their young men in brigandage in order to
keep them in practice. Might not these plain lessons have been
used as a warning to the people of modern Germany to discourage