The Appetite of Tyranny

Letters to an Old Garibaldian

My Dear ------

It is a long time since we met; and I fear these letters may never reach

you. But in these violent times I remember with a curious vividness how you

brandished a paintbrush about your easel when I was a boy; and how it

thrilled me to think that you had so brandished a bayonet against the

Teutons--I hope with the same precision and happy results. Round about

that period, the very pigments seemed to have some sort of picturesque

connection with your national story. There seemed to be something gorgeous

and terrible about Venetian Red; and something quite catastrophic about

Burnt Sienna. But somehow or other, when I saw in the street yesterday the

colours on your flag, it reminded me of the colours on your palette.

You need not fear that I shall try to entangle you or your countrymen in

the matters which it is for Italians alone to decide. You know the perils

of either course much better than I do. Italy, most assuredly, has no need

to prove her courage. She has risked everything in standing out that she

could risk by coming in. The proclamations and press of Germany make it

plain that the Germans have risen to a height of sensibility hardly to be

distinguished from madness. Supposing the nightmare of a Prussian victory,

they will revenge themselves on things more remote than the Triple

Alliance. There was a promise of peace between them and Belgium; there was

none between them and England. The promise to Belgium they broke. The

promise of England they invented. It is called the Treaty of Teutonism. No

one ever heard of it in this country; but it seems well known in academic

circles in Germany. It seems to be something, connected with the colour of

one's hair. But I repeat that I am not concerned to interfere with your

decision, save in so far as I may provide some materials for it by

describing our own.

For I think the first, perhaps the only, fruitful work an Englishman can do

now for the formation of foreign opinion is to talk about what he really

understands, the condition of British opinion. It is as simple as it is

solid. For the first time, perhaps, what we call the United Kingdom

entirely deserves its name. There has been nothing like such unanimity

within an Englishman's recollection. The Irish and even the Welsh were

largely pro-Boers, so were some of the most English of the English. No one

could have been more English than Fox, yet he denounced the war with

Napoleon. No one could be more English than Cobden, but he denounced the

war in the Crimea. It is really extraordinary to find a united England.

Indeed, until lately, it was extraordinary to find a united Englishman.

Those of us who, like the present writer, repudiated the South African war

from its beginnings, had yet a divided heart in the matter, and felt

certain aspects of it as glorious as well as infamous. The first fact I can

offer you is the unquestionable fact that all these doubts and divisions

have ceased. Nor have they ceased by any compromise; but by a universal

flash of faith--or, if you will, of suspicion. Nor were our internal

conflicts lightly abandoned; nor our reconciliations an easy matter. I am,

as you are, a democrat and a citizen of Europe; and my friends and I had

grown to loathe the plutocracy and privilege which sat in the high places

of our country with a loathing which we thought no love could cast out. Of

these rich men I will not speak here; with your permission, I will not

think of them. War is a terrible business in any case; and to some

intellectual temperaments this is the most terrible part of it. That war

takes the young; that war sunders the lovers; that all over Europe brides

and bridegrooms are parting at the church door: all that is only a

commonplace to commonplace people. To give up one's love for one's country

is very great. But to give up one's hate for one's country, this may also

have in it something of pride and something of purification.

What is it that has made the British peoples thus defer not only their

artificial parade of party politics but their real social and moral

complaints and demands? What is it that has united all of us against the

Prussian, as against a mad dog? It is the presence of a certain spirit, as

unmistakable as a pungent smell, which we feel is capable of withering all

the good things in this world. The burglary of Belgium, the bribe to

betray France, these are not excuses; they are facts. But they are only

the facts by which we came to know of the presence of the spirit. They do

not suffice to define the whole spirit itself. A good rough summary is to

say that it is the spirit of barbarism; but indeed it is something worse.

It is the spirit of second-rate civilisation; and the distinction involves

the most important differences. Granted that it could exist, pure barbarism

could not last long; as pure babyhood cannot last long. Of his own nature

the baby is interested in the ticking of a watch; and the time will come

when you will have to tell him, if you only tell him the wrong time. And

that is exactly what the second-rate civilisation does.

But the vital point is here. The abstract barbarian would copy. The cockney

and incomplete civilisation always sets itself up to be copied. And in the

case here considered, the German thinks that it is not only his business to

spread education, but to spread compulsory education. "Science combined

with organisation," says Professor Ostwald of Berlin University, "makes us

terrible to our opponents and ensures a German future for Europe." That is,

as shortly as it can be put, what we are fighting about. We are fighting to

prevent a German future for Europe. We think it would be narrower, nastier,

less sane, less capable of liberty and of laughter, than any of the worst

parts of the European past. And when I cast about for a form in which to

explain shortly why we think so, I thought of you. For this is a matter so

large that I know not how to express it except in terms of artists like

you, in the service of beauty and the faith in freedom. Prussia, at least

cannot help me; Lord Palmerston, I believe, called it a country of damned

professors. Lord Palmerston, I fear, used the word "damned" more or less

flippantly. I use it reverently.

Rome, at her very weakest, has always been a river that wanders and widens

and that waters many fields. Berlin, at its strongest, will never be

anything but a whirlpool, which seeks its own centre, and is sucked down.

It would only narrow all the rest of Europe, as it has already narrowed all

the rest of Germany. There is a spirit of diseased egoism, which at last

makes all things spin upon one pin-point in the brain. It is a spirit

expressed more often in the slangs than in the tongues of men. The English

call it a fad. I do not know what the Italians call it; the Prussians call

it philosophy.

Here is the sort of instance that made me think of you. What would you feel

first, let us say, if I mentioned Michael Angelo? For the first moment,

perhaps, boredom: such as I feel when Americans ask me about

Stratford-on-Avon. But, supposing that just fear quieted, you would feel

what I and every one else can feel. It might be the sense of the majestic

hands of Man upon the locks of the last doors of life; large and terrible

hands, like those of that youth who poises the stone above Florence, and

looks out upon the circle of the hills. It might be that huge heave of

flank and chest and throat in "The Slave," which is like an earthquake

lifting a whole landscape; it might be that tremendous Madonna, whose

charity is more strong than death. Anyhow, your thoughts would be something

worthy of the man's terrible paganism and his more terrible Christianity.

Who but God could have graven Michael Angelo; who came so near to graving

the Mother of God?

German culture deals with the matter as follows:--"Michelangelo Buonarotti

(1475-1564).--(=Bernhard) ancestor of the family, lived in Florence about

1210. He had two sons, Berlinghieri and Buonarrota. By this name recurring

frequently in later generations, the family came to be called. It is a

German name, compounded of Bona (=Bohn) and Hrodo, Roto (=Rohde, Rothe)

Bona and Rotto are cited as Lombard names. Buonarotti is perhaps the old

Lombard Beonrad, corresponding to the word Bonroth. Corresponding names are

Mackrodt, Osterroth, Leonard." And so on, and so on, and so on. "In his

face he has always been well-coloured...the eyes might be called small

rather than large, of the colour of horn, but variable with 'flecks' of

yellow and blue. Hair and beard are black. These particulars are confirmed

by the portraits. First and foremost take the portrait of Bugiardini in

Museo Buonarotti. Here comes to view the 'flecked' appearance of the iris,

especially in the right eye. The left may be described as almost wholly

blue." And so on, and so on, and so on. "In the Museo Civico at Pavia, is a

fresco likeness by an unknown hand, in which this fresh red is distinctly

recognisable on the face. Taking all these bodily characteristics into

consideration, it must be said from an anthropological point of view that

though originally of German family he was a hybrid between the North and

West brunette race."

Would you take the trouble to prove that Michael Angelo was an Italian that

this man takes to prove that he was a German? Of course not. The only

impression this man (who is a recognised Prussian historian) produces on

your mind or mine is that he does not care about Michael Angelo. For you,

being an Italian, are therefore something more than an Italian; and I being

an Englishman, something more than an Englishman. But this poor fellow

really cannot be anything more than a Prussian. He digs and digs to find

dead Prussians, in the catacombs of Rome or under the ruins of Troy. If he

can find one blue eye lying about somewhere, he is satisfied. He has no

philosophy. He has a hobby, which is collecting Germans. It would probably

be vain for you and me to point out that we could prove anything by the

sort of ingenuity which finds the German "rothe" in Buonarotti. We could

have great fun depriving Germany of all her geniuses in that style. We

could say that Moltke must have been an Italian, from the old Latin root

_mol_--indicating the sweetness of that general's disposition. We might say

Bismarck was a Frenchman, since his name begins with the popular theatrical

cry of "Bis!" We might say Goethe was an Englishman, because his name

begins with the popular sporting cry "Go!" But the ultimate difference

between us and the Prussian professor is simply that we are not mad.

The father of Frederick the Great, the founder of the more modern

Hohenzollerns, was mad. His madness consisted of stealing giants; like an

unscrupulous travelling showman. Any man much over six foot high, whether

he were called the Russian Giant or the Irish Giant or the Chinese Giant or

the Hottentot Giant, was in danger of being kidnapped and imprisoned in a

Prussian uniform. It is the same mean sort of madness that is working in

Prussian professors such as the one I have quoted. They can get no further

than the notion of stealing giants. I will not bore you now with all the

other giants they have tried to steal; it is enough to say that St. Paul,

Leonardo da Vinci, and Shakespeare himself are among the monstrosities

exhibited at Frederick-William fair--on grounds as good as those quoted

above. But I have put this particular case before you, as an artist rather

than an Italian, to show what I mean when I object to a "German future for

Europe." I object to something which believes very much in itself, and in

which I do not in the least believe. I object to something which is

conceited and small-minded; but which also has that kind of pertinacity

which always belongs to lunatics. It wants to be able to congratulate

itself on Michael Angelo; never to congratulate the world. It is the spirit

that can be seen in those who go bald trying to trace a genealogy; or go

bankrupt trying to make out a claim to some remote estate. The Prussian has

the inconsistency of the _parvenu_; he will labour to prove that he is

related to some gentleman of the Renaissance, even while he boasts of being

able to "buy him up." If the Italians were really great, why--they were

really Germans; and if they weren't really Germans, well then, they weren't

really great. It is an occupation for an old maid.

Three or four hundred years ago, in the sad silence that had followed the

comparative failure of the noble effort of the Middle Ages, there came upon

all Europe a storm out of the south. Its tumult is of many tongues; one can

hear in it the laughter of Rabelais, or, for that matter, the lyrics of

Shakespeare; but the dark heart of the storm was indeed more austral and

volcanic; a noise of thunderous wings and the name of Michael the

Archangel. And when it had shocked and purified the world and passed, a

Prussian professor found a feather fallen to earth; and proved (in several

volumes) that it could only have come from a Prussian Eagle. He had seen

one--in a cage.

Yours ------,

G.K. CHESTERTON.

* * * * *

My Dear ------

The facts before all Europeans to-day are so fundamental that I still find

it easier to talk about them to you as to an old friend, rather than put it

in the shape of a pamphlet. In my last letter I pointed out two facts

which are pivots. The first is that, to any really cultured person, Prussia

is second-rate. The second is that to almost any Prussian, Prussia is

really first-rate; and is prepared, quite literally, to police the rest of

the world.

For the first matter, the comparative inferiority of German culture cannot

be doubted by people like you. One of the German papers pathetically said

that, though the mangling of Malines and Rheims was very sad, it was a

comfort to think that yet nobler works of art would spring up wherever the

German culture had passed in triumph. From the point of view of humour, it

is really rather sad that they never will. The German Emperor's idea of a

Gothic cathedral is as provocative to the fancy as Mrs. Todgers' idea of a

wooden leg. But I think it perfectly probable that they really intended to

set up such beautiful buildings as they could. Having been blasphemous

enough to ruin such things, they might well be blasphemous enough to

replace them. Even if the Prussian attempt on Paris had not wholly

collapsed as it has, I doubt whether the Prussians would have destroyed

everything. I doubt whether they would even have destroyed the Venus de

Milo. More probably they would have put a pair of arms on it, designed by

some rising German artist--the Emperor or somebody. And the two arms thus

added would look at once like the arms of a woman at a wash-tub. The

destroyers of the tower of Rheims are quite capable of destroying the Tower

of Giotto. But they are equally capable of the greater crime of completing

it. And if they put on a spire, what a spire it would be! What an

extinguisher for that clear and almost transparent Christian candle! Have

you read some of the German explanations of Hamlet? Did I tell you that

Leonardo's hair must have been German hair, because so many of his

contemporaries said it was beautiful? This is what I call being

second-rate. All the German excitement about the colonies of England is

only a half understanding of what was once heroic and is now largely

caddish. The German Emperor's naval vision is a bad copy of Nelson, as

certainly as Frederick the Great's verses were a bad copy of Voltaire.

But the second point was even more important; that weak as the thing is

mentally it is strong materially; and will impose itself materially if we

permit it. The Prussians have failed in everything else; but they have not

failed in getting their subject thousands to do as they are told. They

cannot put up black and white towers in Florence; but they can really put

up black and white posts in Alsace. They have failed in diplomacy. I

suppose it might be called a failure in diplomacy to come into the fight

with two enemies extra and one ally the less. If the Germans, instead of

sending spies to study the Belgian soil, had sent spies to consider the

Belgian soul, they would have been saved hard work for a week or two. They

have failed in controversy. I suppose it might be called a failure in

controversy to say that England may be keeping her word for some wicked

purpose; while Germany may be breaking her word for some noble purpose. And

that is practically all that the Germans can manage to say. They say that

we are an insatiable, unscrupulous, piratical power; and this wild spirit

whirled us into the mad course of respecting a treaty we had signed. They

can find in us no treason except that we keep our treaties: failing to do

this I call failing in controversy. They have failed in popular persuasion.

They have had a very good opportunity. The British Empire does contain many

people who have been badly treated in various ways: the Irish, the Boers;

nay, the Americans themselves, whose national existence began with being

badly treated. With these the Prussians have done comparatively little; and

with Europeans of your sort nothing. They have never once really

sympathised with the feeling of a Switzer for Switzerland; the feeling of a

Norwegian for Norway; the feeling of a Tuscan for Tuscany. Even when

nations are neutral, Prussia can hardly bear them to be patriotic. Even

when they are courting every one else they can praise no one but

themselves. They fail in diplomacy, they fail in debate, they fail even in

demagogy. They have stupid plots, stupid explanations, and even stupid

apologies. But there is one thing they really do not fail in. They do not

fail in finding people stupid enough to carry them out.

Now, it is this question I would ask you to consider; you, as a good middle

type of the Latins, a Liberal but a Catholic, an artist but a soldier. The

danger to the whole civilisation of which Rome was the fountain lies in

this. That the more this strange Pruss people fail in all the other things,

the more they will fall back on this mere fact of a brutal obedience. They

will give orders; they have nothing else to give. I say that this is the

question for you; I do not say, I do not dream of saying, that the answer

is for me. It is for you to weigh the chance that their very failures in

the arts of peace will drive them back upon the arts of war. They could

not, and they did not, dupe your people in diplomacy. They did the most

undiplomatic thing that can be done; they concealed a breach of partnership

without even concealing the concealment. They instigated the intrigue in

Austria in such a way that Italy could honestly claim all the freedom of

past ignorance, combined with all the disillusionment of present knowledge.

They so ran the Triple Alliance that they had to admit your grievance, at

the very moment when they claimed your aid. The English are stupider and

less sensitive than you are; but even the English found the German

Chancellor's diplomacy not insinuating but simply insulting; I swear I

would be a better diplomatist myself. In the same way, there is no danger

of people like you being corrupted in controversy. There is no fear that

the professors who pullulate all over the Baltic Plain will overcome the

Latins in logic. Some of them even claim to be super-logical; and say they

are too big for syllogisms; generally having found even one syllogism too

big for them. If they complain either of your abstention from their cause

or your adhesion to any other, you have an unanswerable answer. You will

say, as you did say, that you did not break the Triple Alliance, even for

the sake of peace. It was they who broke it for the sake of war. You,

obviously, had as much right to be consulted about Servia as Austria had;

and on the mere chess-board of argument it is mate in one move. Nor are

they in the least fitted to make an appeal to the popular sentiment of your

people. The English, I dare say, and the French, have talked an amazing

amount of nonsense about you; but they understand a little better. They do

not write exactly like this, which is from the most public and accepted

Prussian political philosopher (Chamberlain). "Who can live in Italy

to-day and mix with its amiable and highly gifted inhabitants without

feeling with pain that here a great nation is lost, irredeemably lost,

because it lacks the inner driving power," etc., which has brought Von

Kluck so triumphantly through Paris. Even a half-educated Englishman, who

has heard of no Italian poet except Dante, knows that he was something more

than amiable. Even a positively illiterate Frenchman, who has heard of no

Italian warrior except Napoleon, knows that it was not in "inner driving

force" that the artilleryman in question was deficient. "Who can live in

Italy to-day?" Evidently the Prussian philosopher can't. His impressions

are taken from Italian operas; not from Italian streets; certainly not from

Italian fields. As a matter of fact such images of Italy as burn in the

memories of most open-minded Northerners who have been there, are of

exactly the other kind. I for one should be inclined to say, "Who can live

in Italy to-day without feeling that a woman feeding children, or a man

chopping wood, may almost touch him with fear with the fulness of their

humanity: so that he can almost smell blood, as one smells burning?"

Italians often look lazy; that is, they look as if they would not move; but

not as if they could not move, as many Germans do. But even though this

formula fitted the Italians, it seems scarcely calculated to please them.

For the Prussians, then, with the failure of their diplomacy, the failure

of their philosophy, we may also place the failure of their appeals to a

foreign people. The Prussian writer may continue his attempts to soothe

and charm you by telling you that you are irredeemably lost, and that all

great Italians must have been something else. But the method seems to me

ill adapted to popular propaganda; and I cannot but say that on this third

point of persuasion, the German attempt is not striking.

Now all this is important for this reason. If you consider it carefully

you will see why Europe must, at whatever cost, break Germany in battle:

and put an end to her military and material power to _do_ things. If we all

have to fight for it, if we all have to die for it, it must be done. If we

find allies in the dwarfs of Greenland or the giants of Patagonia, it must

be done. And the reason is that unless it is literally and materially done,

other things will be literally and materially done; and horrify the

heavens. They will be silly things; they will be benighted and limited and

laughable things; but they will be accomplished things. Nothing could be

more ridiculous, if that is all, than the moral position of the Prussian in

Poland; where a magnificent officer, making a vast parade of "ruling,"

tries to cheat poor peasants out of their fields (and gets cheated) and

then takes refuge in beating little boys for saying their prayers in their

native tongue. All who remember anything of dignity, of irony, in short of

Rome and reason, can see why an officer need not, should not, had better

not, and generally does not, beat little boys. But an officer _can_ beat

little boys: and a Prussian officer will go on doing it until you take away

the stick. Nothing could be more comic, if that is all, than the position

of Prussians in Alsace: which they declare to be purely German and admit to

be furiously French; so that they have to terrorise it by sabring anybody,

including cripples. Again, any of us can see why an officer need not,

should not, had better not, and generally does not, sabre a cripple. But an

officer _can_ sabre a cripple; and a Prussian officer will go on doing it

until you take away the sabre. It is this insane and rigid realism that

makes their case peculiar: like that of a c******n copying something, or a

half-witted servant taking a message. If they had the power to put black

and white posts round the grave of Virgil, or dig up Dante to see if he had

yellow hair, the mere _doing_ of it which for some of us would be the most

unlikely, would for them be the least unlikely thing. They do not hear the

laughter of the ages. If they had the power to treat the English or Italian

Premier quite literally as a traitor, and shoot him against a wall, they

are quite capable of turning such hysterical rhetoric into reality: and

scattering his brains before they had collected their own. They do not feel

atmospheres. They are all a little deaf; as they are all a little

short-sighted. They are annoyed when their enemies, after such experiences

as those of Belgium, accuse them of breaking their promises. And in one

sense they are right; for there are some sorts of promises they probably

would keep. If they have promised to respect a free country, or an old

friend, to observe a sworn partnership, or to spare a harmless population,

they will find such restrictions chilling and irksome. They will ask some

professor on what principle they are discarding it. But if they have

promised to shoot the cross off a church spire, or empty the inkpot into

somebody's beer, or bring home somebody's ears in their pocket for the

pleasure of their families, I think in these cases they would feel a sort

of a shadow of what civilised men feel in the fulfilment of a promise, as

distinct from the making of it. And, in consideration of such cases, I

cannot go the whole length of those severe critics who say that a Prussian

will never keep his promise.

Unfortunately, it is precisely this sort of actuality and fulfilment that

makes it urgent that Europe should put forth her whole energy to drag down

these antique demoniacs; these idiots filled with force as by fiends. They

_will_ do things, as a maniac will, until he cannot do them. To me it

seemed that some things could not be said and done. I thought a man would

have been ashamed to bribe a new enemy like England to betray an old enemy

like France. I thought a man would have been ashamed to punish the pure

self-defence of folk so offenceless as the Belgians. These hopes must go

from us, my friend. There is only one thing of which the Prussian would be

ashamed; and of that, we have sworn to God, he shall taste before the end.

* * * * *

My Dear ------

The Prussianised German, of whatever blend of races he may be, has one

quality which may perhaps be racially simple; but which is, at any rate,

very plain. Chamberlain, the German philosopher or historian (I know not

which to call him or how to call him either) remarks somewhere that

purebred races possess fidelity; he instances the n***o and the dog--and, I

suppose, the German. Anyhow, it is true that there is a recognisable and

real thing which might be called fidelity (or perhaps monotony) which

exists in Germans in about the same style as in dogs and n*****s. The North

Teuton really has in this respect the simplicities of the savage and the

lower animals; that he has no reactions. He does not laugh at himself. He

does not want to kick himself. He does not, like most of us, repent--or

occasionally even repent of repenting. He does not read his own works and

find them much worse or much better than he had expected. He does not feel

a faint irrational sense of debauch, after even divine pleasures of this

life. Watch him at a German restaurant, and you will satisfy yourself that

he does not. In short, both in the most scientific and in the most casual

sense of the word, he does not know what it is to have a _temper_. He does

not bend and fly back like steel; he sticks out, like wood. In this he

differs from any nation I have known, from your nation and mine, from the

French, the Spanish, the Scotch, the Welsh and the Irish. Bad luck never

braces him as it does us. Good luck never frightens him as it does us. It

can be seen in what the French call Chauvinism and we call Jingoism. For us

it is fireworks; for him it is daylight. On Mafeking Night, celebrating a

small but picturesque success against the Boers, nearly everybody in London

came out waving little flags. Nearly everybody in London is now heartily

ashamed of it. But it would never occur to the Prussians not to ride their

high horses with the freshest insolence for the far-off victory of Sedan;

though on that very anniversary the star of their fate had turned scornful

in the sky, and Von Kluck was in retreat from Paris. Above all, the

Prussian does not feel annoyed, as I do, when foreigners praise his country

for all the wrong reasons. The Prussian will allow you to praise him for

any reasons, for any length of time, for any eternity of folly; he is there

to be praised. Probably he is proud of this; probably he thinks he has a

good digestion, because the poison of praise does not make him sick. He

thinks the absence of such doubt, or self-knowledge, makes for composure,

grandeur, a colossal calm, a superior race--in short, the whole claim of

the Teutons to be the highest spiritual product of Nature and Evolution.

But as I have noticed a calm unity even more complete, not only in dogs and

negroes, but in slugs, slow-worms, mangoldwurzels, moss, mud and bits of

stone, I am a sceptic about this test for the marshalling in rank of all

the children of God. Now I point this out to you here for a very practical

reason. The Prussian will never understand revolutions--which are

generally reactions. He regards them, not only with dislike, but with a

mysterious kind of pity. Throughout his confused popular histories, there

runs a strange suggestion that civic populations have failed hitherto, and

failed because they were always fighting. The population of Berlin does not

fight, or can't; and therefore Berlin will succeed where Greece and Rome

have failed. Hitherto it is plain enough that Berlin has succeeded in

nothing except in bad copies of Greece and Rome; and Prussians would be

wiser to discuss the details of the Greek and Roman past, which we can

follow, rather than the details of their own future, about which we are

naturally not so well informed. Well, every dome they build, every pillar

they put upright, every pedestal for epitaph or panel for decoration, every

type of church, Catholic or Protestant, every kind of street, large or

small, they have copied from the old Pagan or Catholic cities; and those

cities, when they made those things, were boiling with revolutions. I

remember a German professor saying to me, "I should have no scruple about

extinguishing such republics as Brazil, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua; they

are perpetually rioting for one thing or another." I said I supposed he

would have had no scruple in extinguishing Athens, Rome, Florence and

Paris; for they were always rioting for one thing or another. His reply

indicated, I thought, that he felt about C*** or Rienzi very much as the

Scotch Presbyterian Minister felt about Christ, when he was reminded of the

corn-plucking on the Sabbath, and said, "Weel, I dinna think the better of

him." In other words he was quite positive, like all his countrymen, that

he could impose a sort of Pax Germanica, which would satisfy all the needs

of order and of freedom forever; leaving no need for revolutions or

reactions. I am myself of a different opinion. When I was a child, when the

toy-trade of Germany had begun to flood this country, there was a priggish

British couplet, engraven on the minds of governesses, which ran--

This is the least intrusive approach by which I can touch on a topic that

must of necessity be a delicate one; yet which may well be a difficulty

among Latins like yourself. Against this preposterous Prussian upstart we

have not only to protect our unity; we have even to protect our quarrels.

And the deepest of the reactions or revolts of which I have spoken is the

quarrel which (very tragically as I think) has for some hundred years

cloven the Christian from the Liberal ideal. It would ill become me, in

whose country there is neither such clear doctrine nor such combative

democracy, to suppose it can be easy for any of you to close up such sacred

wounds. There must still be Catholics who feel they can never forgive a

Jacobin. There must still be old Republicans who feel that they could never

endure a priest. And yet there is something, the mere sight of which should

lock them both in an instant alliance. They have only to look northward and

hold the third thing, which thinks itself superior to either: the enormous

turnip-face of _ce type l*, as the French say, who conceives that he can

make them both like himself and yet remain superior to both.

I implore you to keep out of the hands of this Fool the quarrel of the

great saints and of the great blasphemers. He will do to religion what he

will do to art; mix up all the colours on your palette into the colour of

mud: and then say that only the purified eyes of Teutons can see that it is

pure white. The other day the Director of Museums in Berlin was said to be

setting about the creation of a new kind of Art: German Art. Philosophers

and men of science were at the same time directed to meet round the table

and found a new Religion: German Religion. How can such people appreciate

art; how can they appreciate religion--nay, how can they appreciate

irreligion? How does one invent a message? How does one create a Creator?

Is it not the plain meaning of the Gospel that it is good news? And is it

not the plain meaning of good news that it must come from outside oneself?

Otherwise I could make myself happy this moment, by inventing an enormous

victory in Flanders. And I suppose (now I come to think of it) that the

Germans do.

By the fulness of your faith and even the fulness of your despair, you that

remember Rome, have earned a right to prevent all our quarrels being

quenched in such cold water from the north. But it is not too much to say

that neither religion at its worst nor republicanism at its worst ever

offered the coarse insult to all mankind that is offered by this new and

nakedly universal monarchy.

There has always been something common to civilised men, whether they

called it being merely a citizen; or being merely a sinner. There has

always been something which your ancestors called _Verecundia_; which is at

once humility and dignity. Whatever our faults, we do not do exactly as

the Prussians do. We do not bellow day and night to draw attention to our

own stern silence. We do not praise ourselves solely because nobody else

will praise us. I, for one, say at the end of these letters, as I said at

the beginning; that in these international matters I have often differed

from my countrymen; I have often differed from myself. I shall not claim

the completeness of this silly creature we discuss. I shall not answer his

boasts with boasts; but with blows.

My front-door is beaten in and broken down suddenly. I see nothing outside,

except a sort of smiling, straw-haired commercial traveller with a notebook

open, who says, "Excuse me, I am a faultless being, I have persuaded

Poland; I can count on my respectful Allies in Alsace. I am simply loved in

Lorraine. _Quae reggio in terris_ ... What place is there on earth where

the name of Prussia is not the signal for hopeful prayers and joyful

dances? I am that German who has civilised Belgium; and delicately trimmed

the frontiers of Denmark. And I may tell you, with the fulness of

conviction, that I have never failed, and shall never fail in anything.

Permit me, therefore, to bless your house by the passage of my beautiful

boots; that I may burgle the house next door."

And then something European that is prouder than pride will rise up in me;

and I shall answer:--

"I am that Englishman who has tortured Ireland, who has been tortured by

South Africa; who knows all his mistakes, who is heavy with all his sins.

And he tells you, Faultless Being, with a truth as deep as his own guilt,

and as deathless as his own remembrance, that you shall not pass this way."