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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11560 ***
+
+THE BARBARISM OF BERLIN
+
+BY
+
+G.K. CHESTERTON
+
+First Published 1914
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+INTRODUCTION: THE FACTS OF THE CASE
+
+  I. THE WAR ON THE WORD
+
+ II. THE REFUSAL OF RECIPROCITY
+
+III. THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY
+
+ IV. THE ESCAPE OF FOLLY
+
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+THE FACTS OF THE CASE.
+
+Unless we are all mad, there is at the back of the most bewildering
+business a story: and if we are all mad, there is no such thing as
+madness. If I set a house on fire, it is quite true that I may illuminate
+many other people's weaknesses as well as my own. It may be that the master
+of the house was burned because he was drunk: it may be that the mistress
+of the house was burned because she was stingy, and perished arguing about
+the expense of a fire-escape. It is, nevertheless, broadly true that they
+both were burned because I set fire to their house. That is the story
+of the thing. The mere facts of the story about the present European
+conflagration are quite as easy to tell.
+
+Before we go on to the deeper things which make this war the most sincere
+war of human history, it is as easy to answer the question of why England
+came to be in it at all, as it is to ask how a man fell down a coal-hole,
+or failed to keep an appointment. Facts are not the whole truth. But
+facts are facts, and in this case the facts are few and simple. Prussia,
+France, and England had all promised not to invade Belgium. Prussia
+proposed to invade Belgium, because it was the safest way of invading
+France. But Prussia promised that if she might break in, through her own
+broken promise and ours, she would break in and not steal. In other words,
+we were offered at the same instant a promise of faith in the future and
+a proposal of perjury in the present. Those interested in human origins
+may refer to an old Victorian writer of English, who, in the last and most
+restrained of his historical essays, wrote of Frederick the Great, the
+founder of this unchanging Prussian policy. After describing how Frederick
+broke the guarantee he had signed on behalf of Maria Theresa, he then
+describes how Frederick sought to put things straight by a promise that
+was an insult. "If she would but let him have Silesia, he would, he said,
+stand by her against any power which should try to deprive her of her other
+dominions, as if he was not already bound to stand by her, or as if his new
+promise could be of more value than the old one." That passage was written
+by Macaulay, but so far as the mere contemporary facts are concerned it
+might have been written by me.
+
+Upon the immediate logical and legal origin of the English interest
+there can be no rational debate. There are some things so simple that
+one can almost prove them with plans and diagrams, as in Euclid. One
+could make a kind of comic calendar of what would have happened to the
+English diplomatist, if he had been silenced every time by Prussian
+diplomacy. Suppose we arrange it in the form of a kind of diary:
+
+July 24: Germany invades Belgium.
+
+July 25: England declares war.
+
+July 26: Germany promises not to annex Belgium.
+
+July 27: England withdraws from the war.
+
+July 28: Germany annexes Belgium, England declares war.
+
+July 29: Germany promises not to annex France, England withdraws from the
+war.
+
+July 30: Germany annexes France, England declares war.
+
+July 31: Germany promises not to annex England.
+
+Aug. 1: England withdraws from the war. Germany invades England.
+
+How long is anybody expected to go on with that sort of game; or keep peace
+at that illimitable price? How long must we pursue a road in which promises
+are all fetishes in front of us; and all fragments behind us? No; upon the
+cold facts of the final negotiations, as told by any of the diplomatists in
+any of the documents, there is no doubt about the story. And no doubt about
+the villain of the story.
+
+These are the last facts; the facts which involved England. It is equally
+easy to state the first facts; the facts which involved Europe. The
+prince who practically ruled Austria was shot by certain persons whom the
+Austrian Government believed to be conspirators from Servia. The Austrian
+Government piled up arms and armies, but said not a word either to Servia
+their suspect, or Italy their ally. From the documents it would seem
+that Austria kept everybody in the dark, except Prussia. It is probably
+nearer the truth to say that Prussia kept everybody in the dark, including
+Austria. But all that is what is called opinion, belief, conviction, or
+common sense: and we are not dealing with it here. The objective fact is
+that Austria told Servia to permit Servian officers to be suspended by the
+authority of Austrian officers; and told Servia to submit to this within
+forty-eight hours. In other words, the Sovereign of Servia was practically
+told to take off not only the laurels of two great campaigns, but his own
+lawful and national crown, and to do it in a time in which no respectable
+citizen is expected to discharge an hotel bill. Servia asked for time for
+arbitration--in short, for peace. But Russia had already begun to mobilise;
+and Prussia, presuming that Servia might thus be rescued, declared war.
+
+Between these two ends of fact, the ultimatum to Servia, the ultimatum
+to Belgium, anyone so inclined can of course talk as if everything were
+relative. If anyone asks why the Czar should rush to the support of
+Servia, it is easy to ask why the Kaiser should rush to the support of
+Austria. If anyone says that the French would attack the Germans, it
+is sufficient to answer that the Germans did attack the French. There
+remain, however, two attitudes to consider, even perhaps two arguments to
+counter, which can best be considered and countered under this general
+head of facts. First of all, there is a curious, cloudy sort of argument,
+much affected by the professional rhetoricians of Prussia, who are sent
+out to instruct and correct the minds of Americans or Scandinavians. It
+consists of going into convulsions of incredulity and scorn at the mention
+of Russia's responsibility of Servia, or England's responsibility of
+Belgium; and suggesting that, treaty or no treaty, frontier or no frontier,
+Russia would be out to slay Teutons or England to steal Colonies. Here, as
+elsewhere, I think the professors dotted all over the Baltic plain fail in
+lucidity and in the power of distinguishing ideas. Of course it is quite
+true that England has material interests to defend, and will probably use
+the opportunity to defend them; or, in other words, of course England, like
+everybody else, would be more comfortable if Prussia were less predominant.
+
+The fact remains that we did not do what the Germans did. We did not
+invade Holland to seize a naval and commercial advantage; and whether
+they say that we wished to do it in our greed, or feared to do it in our
+cowardice, the fact remains that we did not do it. Unless this commonsense
+principle be kept in view, I cannot conceive how any quarrel can possibly
+be judged. A contract may be made between two persons solely for material
+advantage on each side: but the moral advantage is still generally
+supposed to lie with the person who keeps the contract. Surely it cannot
+be dishonest to be honest--even if honesty is the best policy. Imagine the
+most complex maze of indirect motive; and still the man who keeps faith for
+money cannot possibly be worse than the man who breaks faith for money. It
+will be noted that this ultimate test applies in the same way to Servia as
+to Belgium and Britain. The Servians may not be a very peaceful people,
+but on the occasion under discussion it was certainly they who wanted
+peace. You may choose to think the Serb a sort of born robber: but on this
+occasion it was certainly the Austrian who was trying to rob. Similarly,
+you may call England perfidious as a sort of historical summary; and
+declare your private belief that Mr. Asquith was vowed from infancy to the
+ruin of the German Empire, a Hannibal and hater of the eagles. But, when
+all is said, it is nonsense to call a man perfidious because he keeps his
+promise. It is absurd to complain of the sudden treachery of a business man
+in turning up punctually to his appointment: or the unfair shock given to a
+creditor by the debtor paying his debts.
+
+Lastly, there is an attitude, not unknown in the crisis, against which I
+should particularly like to protest. I should address my protest especially
+to those lovers and pursuers of peace who, very shortsightedly, have
+occasionally adopted it. I mean the attitude which is impatient of these
+preliminary details about who did this or that, and whether it was right
+or wrong. They are satisfied with saying that an enormous calamity, called
+war, has been begun by some or all of us and should be ended by some or
+all of us. To these people, this preliminary chapter about the precise
+happenings must appear not only dry (and it must of necessity be the driest
+part of the task) but essentially needless and barren. I wish to tell
+these people that they are wrong; that they are wrong upon all principles
+of human justice and historic continuity; but that they are specially and
+supremely wrong upon their own principles of arbitration and international
+peace.
+
+These sincere and high-minded peace-lovers are always telling us that
+citizens no longer settle their quarrels by private violence; and that
+nations should no longer settle theirs by public violence. They are always
+telling us that we no longer fight duels; and need not wage wars. In
+short, they perpetually base their peace proposals on the fact that an
+ordinary citizen no longer avenges himself with an axe. But how is he
+prevented from revenging himself with an axe? If he hits his neighbour on
+the head with the kitchen chopper, what do we do? Do we all join hands,
+like children playing Mulberry Bush, and say, "We are all responsible for
+this; but let us hope it will not spread. Let us hope for the happy day
+when we shall leave off chopping at the man's head; and when nobody shall
+ever chop anything for ever and ever." Do we say, "Let bygones be bygones;
+why go back to all the dull details with which the business began; who can
+tell with what sinister motives the man was standing there, within reach of
+the hatchet?" We do not. We keep the peace in private life by asking for
+the facts of provocation, and the proper object of punishment. We do go
+into the dull details; we do enquire into the origins; we do emphatically
+enquire who it was that hit first. In short, we do what I have done very
+briefly in this place.
+
+Given this, it is indeed true that behind these facts there are truths;
+truths of a terrible, of a spiritual sort. In mere fact, the Germanic
+power has been wrong about Servia, wrong about Russia, wrong about Belgium,
+wrong about England, wrong about Italy. But there was a reason for its
+being wrong everywhere; and of that root reason, which has moved half the
+world against it, I shall speak later in this series. For that is something
+too omnipresent to be proved, too indisputable to be helped by detail. It
+is nothing less than the locating, after more than a hundred years of
+recriminations and wrong explanations, of the modern European evil; the
+finding of the fountain from which poison has flowed upon all the nations
+of the earth.
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE WAR ON THE WORD
+
+
+It will hardly be denied that there is one lingering doubt in many, who
+recognise unavoidable self-defence in the instant parry of the English
+sword, and who have no great love for the sweeping sabre of Sadowa and
+Sedan. That doubt is the doubt whether Russia, as compared with Prussia,
+is sufficiently decent and democratic to be the ally of liberal and
+civilised powers. I take first, therefore, this matter of civilisation.
+
+It is vital in a discussion like this that we should make sure we are
+going by meanings and not by mere words. It is not necessary in any
+argument to settle what a word means or ought to mean. But it is necessary
+in every argument to settle what we propose to mean by the word. So long
+as our opponent understands what is the _thing_ of which we are talking,
+it does not matter to the argument whether the word is or is not the one
+he would have chosen. A soldier does not say "We were ordered to go to
+Mechlin; but I would rather go to Malines." He may discuss the etymology
+and archaeology of the difference on the march: but the point is that he
+knows where to go. So long as we know what a given word is to mean in
+a given discussion, it does not even matter if it means something else
+in some other and quite distinct discussion. We have a perfect right to
+say that the width of a window comes to four feet; even if we instantly
+and cheerfully change the subject to the larger mammals, and say that an
+elephant has four feet. The identity of the words does not matter, because
+there is no doubt at all about the meanings; because nobody is likely to
+think of an elephant as four feet long, or of a window as having tusks and
+a curly trunk.
+
+It is essential to emphasise this consciousness of the _thing_ under
+discussion in connection with two or three words that are, as it were, the
+key-words of this war. One of them is the word "barbarian." The Prussians
+apply it to the Russians: the Russians apply it to the Prussians. Both,
+I think, really mean something that really exists, name or no name. Both
+mean different things. And if we ask what these different things are, we
+shall understand why England and France prefer Russia; and consider Prussia
+the really dangerous barbarian of the two. To begin with, it goes so much
+deeper even than atrocities; of which, in the past at least, all the three
+Empires of Central Europe have partaken pretty equally, as they partook of
+Poland. An English writer, seeking to avert the war by warnings against
+Russian influence, said that the flogged backs of Polish women stood
+between us and the Alliance. But not long before, the flogging of women by
+an Austrian general led to that officer being thrashed in the streets of
+London by Barclay and Perkins' draymen. And as for the third power, the
+Prussians, it seems clear that they have treated Belgian women in a style
+compared with which flogging might be called an official formality. But, as
+I say, something much deeper than any such recrimination lies behind the
+use of the word on either side. When the German Emperor complains of our
+allying ourselves with a barbaric and half-oriental power, he is not (I
+assure you) shedding tears over the grave of Kosciusko. And when I say (as
+I do most heartily) that the German Emperor is a barbarian, I am not merely
+expressing any prejudices I may have against the profanation of churches
+or of children. My countrymen and I mean a certain and intelligible thing
+when we call the Prussians barbarians. It is quite different from the
+thing attributed to Russians; and it could not possibly be attributed to
+Russians. It is very important that the neutral world should understand
+what this thing is.
+
+If the German calls the Russian barbarous, he presumably means imperfectly
+civilised. There is a certain path along which Western nations have
+proceeded in recent times, and it is tenable that Russia has not proceeded
+so far as the others: that she has less of the special modern system in
+science, commerce, machinery, travel, or political constitution. The
+Russ ploughs with an old plough; he wears a wild beard; he adores
+relics; his life is as rude and hard as that of a subject of Alfred the
+Great. Therefore he is, in the German sense, a barbarian. Poor fellows like
+Gorky and Dostoieffsky have to form their own reflections on the scenery
+without the assistance of large quotations from Schiller on garden seats,
+or inscriptions directing them to pause and thank the All-Father for
+the finest view in Hesse-Pumpernickel. The Russians, having nothing but
+their faith, their fields, their great courage, and their self-governing
+communes, are quite cut off from what is called (in the fashionable street
+in Frankfort) The True, The Beautiful and The Good. There is a real sense
+in which one can call such backwardness barbaric, by comparison with the
+Kaiserstrasse; and in that sense it is true of Russia.
+
+Now we, the French and English, do not mean this when we call the Prussians
+barbarians. If their cities soared higher than their flying ships, if
+their trains travelled faster than their bullets, we should still call
+them barbarians. We should know exactly what we meant by it; and we
+should know that it is true. For we do not mean anything that is an
+imperfect civilisation by accident. We mean something that is the enemy
+of civilisation by design. We mean something that is wilfully at war with
+the principles by which human society has been made possible hitherto. Of
+course it must be partly civilised even to destroy civilisation. Such
+ruin could not be wrought by the savages that are merely undeveloped or
+inert. You could not have even Huns without horses; or horses without
+horsemanship. You could not have even Danish pirates without ships,
+or ships without seamanship. This person, whom I may call the Positive
+Barbarian, must be rather more superficially up-to-date than what I may
+call the Negative Barbarian. Alaric was an officer in the Roman legions:
+but for all that he destroyed Rome. Nobody supposes that Eskimos could
+have done it at all neatly. But (in our meaning) barbarism is not a matter
+of methods, but of aims. We say that these veneered vandals have the
+perfectly serious aim of destroying certain ideas, which, as they think,
+the world has outgrown; without which, as we think, the world will die.
+
+It is essential that this perilous peculiarity in the Pruss, or Positive
+Barbarian, should be seized. He has what he fancies is a new idea; and
+he is going to apply it to everybody. As a fact it is simply a false
+generalisation; but he is really trying to make it general. This does
+not apply to the Negative Barbarian: it does not apply to the Russian
+or the Servian, even if they are barbarians. If a Russian peasant does
+beat his wife, he does it because his fathers did it before him: he is
+likely to beat less rather than more, as the past fades away. He does
+not think, as the Prussian would, that he has made a new discovery in
+physiology in finding that a woman is weaker than a man. If a Servian
+does knife his rival without a word, he does it because other Servians
+have done it. He may regard it even as piety, but certainly not as
+progress. He does not think, as the Prussian does, that he founds a new
+school of horology by starting before the word "Go." He does not think
+he is in advance of the world in militarism merely because he is behind
+it in morals. No; the danger of the Pruss is that he is prepared to
+fight for old errors as if they were new truths. He has somehow heard
+of certain shallow simplifications, and imagines that we have never
+heard of them. And, as I have said, his limited, but very sincere lunacy
+concentrates chiefly in a desire to destroy two ideas, the twin root ideas
+of rational society. The first is the idea of record and promise: the
+second is the idea of reciprocity.
+
+It is plain that the promise, or extension of responsibility through time,
+is what chiefly distinguishes us, I will not say from savages, but from
+brutes and reptiles. This was noted by the shrewdness of the Old Testament,
+when it summed up the dark irresponsible enormity of Leviathan in the
+words, "Will he make a pact with thee?" The promise, like the wheel, is
+unknown in Nature: and is the first mark of man. Referring only to human
+civilisation, it may be said with seriousness that in the beginning was
+the Word. The vow is to the man what the song is to the bird, or the bark
+to the dog; his voice, whereby he is known. Just as a man who cannot keep
+an appointment is not fit even to fight a duel, so the man who cannot keep
+an appointment with himself is not sane enough even for suicide. It is not
+easy to mention anything on which the enormous apparatus of human life can
+be said to depend. But if it depends on anything, it is on this frail cord,
+flung from the forgotten hills of yesterday to the invisible mountains of
+to-morrow. On that solitary string hangs everything from Armageddon to an
+almanac, from a successful revolution to a return ticket. On that solitary
+string the Barbarian is hacking heavily, with a sabre which is fortunately
+blunt.
+
+Anyone can see this well enough, merely by reading the last negotiations
+between London and Berlin. The Prussians had made a new discovery in
+international politics: that it may often be convenient to make a promise;
+and yet curiously inconvenient to keep it. They were charmed, in their
+simple way, with this scientific discovery, and desired to communicate it
+to the world. They therefore promised England a promise, on condition that
+she broke a promise, and on the implied condition that the new promise
+might be broken as easily as the old one. To the profound astonishment of
+Prussia, this reasonable offer was refused! I believe that the astonishment
+of Prussia was quite sincere. That is what I mean when I say that the
+Barbarian is trying to cut away that cord of honesty and clear record on
+which hangs all that men have made.
+
+The friends of the German cause have complained that Asiatics and Africans
+upon the very verge of savagery have been brought against them from
+India and Algiers. And in ordinary circumstances, I should sympathise
+with such a complaint made by a European people. But the circumstances
+are not ordinary. Here, again, the quiet unique barbarism of Prussia
+goes deeper than what we call barbarities. About mere barbarities, it
+is true, the Turco and the Sikh would have a very good reply to the
+superior Teuton. The general and just reason for not using non-European
+tribes against Europeans is that given by Chatham against the use of the
+Red Indian: that such allies might do very diabolical things. But the
+poor Turco might not unreasonably ask, after a week-end in Belgium, what
+more diabolical things he _could_ do than the highly cultured Germans
+were doing themselves. Nevertheless, as I say, the justification of any
+extra-European aid goes deeper than any such details. It rests upon
+the fact that even other civilisations, even much lower civilisations,
+even remote and repulsive civilisations, depend as much as our own on
+this primary principle, on which the super-morality of Potsdam declares
+open War. Even savages promise things; and respect those who keep their
+promises. Even Orientals write things down: and though they write them
+from right to left, they know the importance of a scrap of paper. Many
+merchants will tell you that the word of the sinister and almost unhuman
+Chinaman is often as good as his bond: and it was amid palm trees and
+Syrian pavilions that the great utterance opened the tabernacle to him that
+sweareth to his hurt and changeth not. There is doubtless a dense labyrinth
+of duplicity in the East, and perhaps more guile in the individual Asiatic
+than in the individual German. But we are not talking of the violations
+of human morality in various parts of the world. We are talking about a
+new and inhuman morality, which denies altogether the day of obligation.
+The Prussians have been told by their literary men that everything depends
+upon Mood: and by their politicians that all arrangements dissolve before
+"necessity." That is the importance of the German Chancellor's phrase. He
+did not allege some special excuse in the case of Belgium, which might
+make it seem an exception that proved the rule. He distinctly argued, as
+on a principle applicable to other cases, that victory was a necessity
+and honour was a scrap of paper. And it is evident that the half-educated
+Prussian imagination really cannot get any farther than this. It cannot
+see that if everybody's action were entirely incalculable from hour to
+hour, it would not only be the end of all promises, but the end of all
+projects. In not being able to see that, the Berlin philosopher is really
+on a lower mental level than the Arab who respects the salt, or the Brahmin
+who preserves the caste. And in this quarrel we have a right to come with
+scimitars as well as sabres, with bows as well as rifles, with assegai
+and tomahawk and boomerang, because there is in all these at least a seed
+of civilisation that these intellectual anarchists would kill. And if
+they should find us in our last stand girt with such strange swords and
+following unfamiliar ensigns, and ask us for what we fight in so singular
+a company, we shall know what to reply: "We fight for the trust and for
+the tryst; for fixed memories and the possible meeting of men; for all
+that makes life anything but an uncontrollable nightmare. We fight for the
+long arm of honour and remembrance; for all that can lift a man above the
+quicksands of his moods, and give him the mastery of time."
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE REFUSAL OF RECIPROCITY
+
+
+In the last summary I suggested that Barbarism, as we mean it, is not mere
+ignorance or even mere cruelty. It has a more precise sense, and means
+militant hostility to certain necessary human ideas. I took the case of the
+vow or the contract, which Prussian intellectualism would destroy. I urged
+that the Prussian is a spiritual Barbarian, because he is not bound by his
+own past, any more than a man in a dream. He avows that when he promised
+to respect a frontier on Monday, he did not foresee what he calls "the
+necessity" of not respecting it on Tuesday. In short, he is like a child,
+who at the end of all reasonable explanations and reminders of admitted
+arrangements has no answer except "But I _want_ to."
+
+There is another idea in human arrangements so fundamental as to be
+forgotten; but now for the first time denied. It may be called the idea
+of reciprocity; or, in better English, of give and take. The Prussian
+appears to be quite intellectually incapable of this thought. He cannot,
+I think, conceive the idea that is the foundation of all comedy; that, in
+the eyes of the other man, he is only the other man. And if we carry this
+clue through the institutions of Prussianised Germany, we shall find how
+curiously his mind has been limited in the matter. The German differs from
+other patriots in the inability to understand patriotism. Other European
+peoples pity the Poles or the Welsh for their violated borders; but Germans
+only pity themselves. They might take forcible possession of the Severn or
+the Danube, of the Thames or the Tiber, of the Garry or the Garonne--and
+they would still be singing sadly about how fast and true stands the watch
+on Rhine; and what a shame it would be if anyone took their own little
+river away from them. That is what I mean by not being reciprocal: and you
+will find it in all that they do: as in all that is done by savages.
+
+Here, again, it is very necessary to avoid confusing this soul of the
+savage with mere savagery in the sense of brutality or butchery; in which
+the Greeks, the French and all the most civilised nations have indulged in
+hours of abnormal panic or revenge. Accusations of cruelty are generally
+mutual. But it is the point about the Prussian that with him nothing is
+mutual. The definition of the true savage does not concern itself even with
+how much more he hurts strangers or captives than do the other tribes of
+men. The definition of the true savage is that he laughs when he hurts you;
+and howls when you hurt him. This extraordinary inequality in the mind is
+in every act and word that comes from Berlin. For instance, no man of the
+world believes all he sees in the newspapers; and no journalist believes a
+quarter of it. We should, therefore, be quite ready in the ordinary way to
+take a great deal off the tales of German atrocities; to doubt this story
+or deny that. But there is one thing that we cannot doubt or deny: the seal
+and authority of the Emperor. In the Imperial proclamation the fact that
+certain "frightful" things have been done is admitted; and justified on
+the ground of their frightfulness. It was a military necessity to terrify
+the peaceful populations with something that was not civilised, something
+that was hardly human. Very well. That is an intelligible policy: and in
+that sense an intelligible argument. An army endangered by foreigners
+may do the most frightful things. But then we turn the next page of the
+Kaiser's public diary, and we find him writing to the President of the
+United States, to complain that the English are using dum-dum bullets
+and violating various regulations of the Hague Conference. I pass for
+the present the question of whether there is a word of truth in these
+charges. I am content to gaze rapturously at the blinking eyes of the True,
+or Positive, Barbarian. I suppose he would be quite puzzled if we said that
+violating the Hague Conference was "a military necessity" to us; or that
+the rules of the Conference were only a scrap of paper. He would be quite
+pained if we said that dum-dum bullets, "by their very frightfulness,"
+would be very useful to keep conquered Germans in order. Do what he will,
+he cannot get outside the idea that he, because he is he and not you, is
+free to break the law; and also to appeal to the law. It is said that the
+Prussian officers play at a game called Kriegsspiel, or the War Game. But
+in truth they could not play at any game; for the essence of every game is
+that the rules are the same on both sides.
+
+But taking every German institution in turn, the case is the same; and
+it is not a case of mere bloodshed or military bravado. The duel, for
+example, can legitimately be called a barbaric thing; but the word is
+here used in another sense. There are duels in Germany; but so there are
+in France, Italy, Belgium and Spain; indeed, there are duels wherever
+there are dentists, newspapers, Turkish baths, time-tables, and all the
+curses of civilisation; except in England and a corner of America. You
+may happen to regard the duel as an historic relic of the more barbaric
+States on which these modern States were built. It might equally well be
+maintained that the duel is everywhere the sign of high civilisation;
+being the sign of its more delicate sense of honour, its more vulnerable
+vanity, or its greater dread of social disrepute. But whichever of the two
+views you take, you must concede that the essence of the duel is an armed
+equality. I should not, therefore, apply the word barbaric, as I am using
+it, to the duels of German officers or even to the broadsword combats
+that are conventional among the German students. I do not see why a young
+Prussian should not have scars all over his face if he likes them; nay,
+they are often the redeeming points of interest on an otherwise somewhat
+unenlightening countenance. The duel may be defended; the sham duel may be
+defended.
+
+What cannot be defended is something really peculiar to Prussia, of which
+we hear numberless stories, some of them certainly true. It might be called
+the one-sided duel. I mean the idea that there is some sort of dignity
+in drawing the sword upon a man who has not got a sword; a waiter, or a
+shop assistant, or even a schoolboy. One of the officers of the Kaiser
+in the affair at Saberne was found industriously hacking at a cripple. In
+all these matters I would avoid sentiment. We must not lose our tempers
+at the mere cruelty of the thing; but pursue the strict psychological
+distinction. Others besides German soldiers have slain the defenceless,
+for loot or lust or private malice, like any other murderer. The point is
+that nowhere else but in Prussian Germany is any theory of honour mixed
+up with such things; any more than with poisoning or picking pockets. No
+French, English, Italian or American gentleman would think he had in some
+way cleared his own character by sticking his sabre through some ridiculous
+greengrocer who had nothing in his hand but a cucumber. It would seem as if
+the word which is translated from the German as "honour," must really mean
+something quite different in German. It seems to mean something more like
+what we should call "prestige."
+
+The fundamental fact, however, is the absence of the reciprocal idea. The
+Prussian is not sufficiently civilised for the duel. Even when he crosses
+swords with us his thoughts are not as our thoughts; when we both glorify
+war, we are glorifying different things. Our medals are wrought like his,
+but they do not mean the same thing; our regiments are cheered as his are,
+but the thought in the heart is not the same; the Iron Cross is on the
+bosom of his king, but it is not the sign of our God. For we, alas, follow
+our God with many relapses and self-contradictions, but he follows his very
+consistently. Through all the things that we have examined, the view of
+national boundaries, the view of military methods, the view of personal
+honour and self-defence, there runs in their case something of an atrocious
+simplicity; something too simple for us to understand: the idea that glory
+consists in holding the steel, and not in facing it.
+
+If further examples were necessary, it would be easy to give hundreds
+of them. Let us leave, for the moment, the relation between man and man
+in the thing called the duel. Let us take the relation between man and
+woman, in that immortal duel which we call a marriage. Here again we shall
+find that other Christian civilisations aim at some kind of equality;
+even if the balance be irrational or dangerous. Thus, the two extremes
+of the treatment of women might be represented by what are called the
+respectable classes in America and in France. In America they choose the
+risk of comradeship; in France the compensation of courtesy. In America it
+is practically possible for any young gentleman to take any young lady for
+what he calls (I deeply regret to say) a joyride; but at least the man goes
+with the woman as much as the woman with the man. In France the young woman
+is protected like a nun while she is unmarried; but when she is a mother
+she is really a holy woman; and when she is a grandmother she is a holy
+terror. By both extremes the woman gets something back out of life. There
+is only one place where she gets little or nothing back; and that is the
+north of Germany. France and America aim alike at equality--America by
+similarity; France by dissimilarity. But North Germany does definitely
+aim at inequality. The woman stands up, with no more irritation than a
+butler; the man sits down, with no more embarrassment than a guest. This is
+the cool affirmation of inferiority, as in the case of the sabre and the
+tradesman. "Thou goest with women; forget not thy whip," said Nietzsche.
+It will be observed that he does not say "poker"; which might come more
+naturally to the mind of a more common or Christian wife-beater. But then
+a poker is a part of domesticity; and might be used by the wife as well as
+the husband. In fact, it often, is. The sword and the whip are the weapons
+of a privileged caste.
+
+Pass from the closest of all differences, that between husband and wife,
+to the most distant of all differences, that of the remote and unrelated
+races who have seldom seen each other's faces, and never been tinged
+with each other's blood. Here we still find the same unvarying Prussian
+principle. Any European might feel a genuine fear of the Yellow Peril; and
+many Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Russians have felt and expressed it. Many
+might say, and have said, that the Heathen Chinee is very heathen indeed;
+that if he ever advances against us he will trample and torture and utterly
+destroy, in a way that Eastern people do, but Western people do not. Nor do
+I doubt the German Emperor's sincerity when he sought to point out to us
+how abnormal and abominable such a nightmare campaign would be, supposing
+that it could ever come. But now comes the comic irony; which never fails
+to follow on the attempt of the Prussian to be philosophic. For the Kaiser,
+after explaining to his troops how important it was to avoid Eastern
+Barbarism, instantly commanded them to become Eastern Barbarians. He told
+them, in so many words, to be Huns: and leave nothing living or standing
+behind them. In fact, he frankly offered a new army corps of aboriginal
+Tartars to the Far East, within such time as it may take a bewildered
+Hanoverian to turn into a Tartar. Anyone who has the painful habit of
+personal thought will perceive here at once the non-reciprocal principle
+again. Boiled down to its bones of logic, it means simply this: "I am a
+German and you are a Chinaman. Therefore I, being a German, have a right
+to be a Chinaman. But you have no right to be a Chinaman; because you
+are only a Chinaman." This is probably the highest point to which German
+culture has risen.
+
+The principle here neglected, which may be called Mutuality by those who
+misunderstand and dislike the word Equality, does not offer so clear a
+distinction between the Prussian and the other peoples as did the first
+Prussian principle of an infinite and destructive opportunism; or, in
+other words, the principle of being unprincipled. Nor upon this second
+can one take up so obvious a position touching the other civilisations or
+semi-civilisations of the world. Some idea of oath and bond there is in the
+rudest tribes, in the darkest continents. But it might be maintained, of
+the more delicate and imaginative element of reciprocity, that a cannibal
+in Borneo understands it almost as little as a professor in Berlin. A
+narrow and one-sided seriousness is the fault of barbarians all over the
+world. This may have been the meaning, for aught I know, of the one eye of
+the Cyclops: that the Barbarian cannot see round things or look at them
+from two points of view; and thus becomes a blind beast and an eater of
+men. Certainly there can be no better summary of the savage than this,
+which, as we have seen, unfits him for the duel. He is the man who cannot
+love--no, nor even hate--his neighbour as himself.
+
+But this quality in Prussia does have one effect which has reference
+to the same quest of the lower civilisations. It disposes once and
+for all at least of the civilising mission of Germany. Evidently the
+Germans are the last people in the world to be trusted with the task. They
+are as shortsighted morally as physically. What is their sophism of
+"necessity" but an inability to imagine to-morrow morning? What is their
+non-reciprocity but an inability to imagine, not a god or devil, but
+merely another man? Are these to judge mankind? Men of two tribes in
+Africa not only know that they are all men, but can understand that they
+are all black men. In this they are quite seriously in advance of the
+intellectual Prussian; who cannot be got to see that we are all white
+men. The ordinary eye is unable to perceive in the North-East Teuton,
+anything that marks him out especially from the more colourless classes of
+the rest of Aryan mankind. He is simply a white man, with a tendency to
+the grey or the drab. Yet he will explain, in serious official documents,
+that the difference between him and us is a difference between "the
+master-race and the inferior-race." The collapse of German philosophy
+always occurs at the beginning, rather than the end of an argument; and the
+difficulty here is that there is no way of testing which is a master-race
+except by asking which is your own race. If you cannot find out (as is
+usually the case) you fall back on the absurd occupation of writing history
+about prehistoric times. But I suggest quite seriously that if the Germans
+can give their philosophy to the Hottentots, there is no reason why they
+should not give their sense of superiority to the Hottentots. If they can
+see such fine shades between the Goth and the Gaul, there is no reason why
+similar shades should not lift the savage above other savages; why any
+Ojibway should not discover that he is one tint redder than the Dacotahs;
+or any nigger in the Cameroons say he is not so black as he is painted. For
+this principle of a quite unproved racial supremacy is the last and worst
+of the refusals of reciprocity. The Prussian calls all men to admire the
+beauty of his large blue eyes. If they do, it is because they have inferior
+eyes: if they don't, it is because they have no eyes.
+
+Wherever the most miserable remnant of our race, astray and dried up in
+deserts, or buried for ever under the fall of bad civilisations, has some
+feeble memory that men are men, that bargains are bargains, that there are
+two sides to a question, or even that it takes two to make a quarrel--that
+remnant has the right to resist the New Culture, to the knife and club
+and the splintered stone. For the Prussian begins all his culture by that
+act which is the destruction of all creative thought and constructive
+action. He breaks that mirror in the mind, in which a man can see the face
+of his friend and foe.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY
+
+
+The German Emperor has reproached this country with allying itself with
+"barbaric and semi-oriental power." We have already considered in what
+sense we use the word barbaric: it is in the sense of one who is hostile
+to civilisation, not one who is insufficient in it. But when we pass from
+the idea of the barbaric to the idea of the oriental, the case is even
+more curious. There is nothing particularly Tartar in Russian affairs,
+except the fact that Russia expelled the Tartars. The eastern invader
+occupied and crushed the country for many years; but that is equally true
+of Greece, of Spain, and even of Austria. If Russia has suffered from the
+East she has suffered in order to resist it: and it is rather hard that
+the very miracle of her escape should make a mystery about her origin.
+Jonah may or may not have been three days inside a fish, but that does
+not make him a merman. And in all the other cases of European nations who
+escaped the monstrous captivity, we do admit the purity and continuity
+of the European type. We consider the old Eastern rule as a wound, but
+not as a stain. Copper-coloured men out of Africa overruled for centuries
+the religion and patriotism of Spaniards. Yet I have never heard that
+Don Quixote was an African fable on the lines of Uncle Remus. I have
+never heard that the heavy black in the pictures of Velasquez was due
+to a negro ancestry. In the case of Spain, which is close to us, we can
+recognise the resurrection of a Christian and cultured nation after its
+age of bondage. But Russia is rather remote; and those to whom nations are
+but names in newspapers can really fancy, like Mr. Baring's friend, that
+all Russian churches are "mosques." Yet the land of Turgeniev is not a
+wilderness of fakirs; and even the fanatical Russian is as proud of being
+different from the Mongol, as the fanatical Spaniard was proud of being
+different from the Moor.
+
+The town of Reading, as it exists, offers few opportunities for piracy
+on the high seas: yet it was the camp of the pirates in Alfred's day. I
+should think it hard to call the people of Berkshire half-Danish, merely
+because they drove out the Danes. In short, some temporary submergence
+under the savage flood was the fate of many of the most civilised states
+of Christendom; and it is quite ridiculous to argue that Russia, which
+wrestled hardest, must have recovered least. Everywhere, doubtless, the
+East spread a sort of enamel over the conquered countries, but everywhere
+the enamel cracked. Actual history, in fact, is exactly opposite to
+the cheap proverb invented against the Muscovite. It is not true to
+say "Scratch a Russian and you find a Tartar." In the darkest hour of
+the barbaric dominion it was truer to say, "Scratch a Tartar and you
+find a Russian." It was the civilisation that survived under all the
+barbarism. This vital romance of Russia, this revolution against Asia, can
+be proved in pure fact; not only from the almost superhuman activity of
+Russia during the struggle, but also (which is much rarer as human history
+goes) by her quite consistent conduct since. She is the only great nation
+which has really expelled the Mongol from her country, and continued to
+protest against the presence of the Mongol in her continent. Knowing
+what he had been in Russia, she knew what he would be in Europe. In
+this she pursued a logical line of thought, which was, if anything, too
+unsympathetic with the energies and religions of the East. Every other
+country, one may say, has been an ally of the Turk; that is, of the Mongol
+and the Moslem. The French played them as pieces against Austria; the
+English warmly supported them under the Palmerston regime; even the young
+Italians sent troops to the Crimea; and of Prussia and her Austrian vassal
+it is nowadays needless to speak. For good or evil, it is the fact of
+history that Russia is the only Power in Europe that has never supported
+the Crescent against the Cross.
+
+That, doubtless, will appear an unimportant matter; but it may become
+important under certain peculiar conditions. Suppose, for the sake
+of argument, that there were a powerful prince in Europe who had gone
+ostentatiously out of his way to pay reverence to the remains of the
+Tartar, Mongol and Moslem, which are left as outposts in Europe. Suppose
+there were a Christian Emperor who could not even go to the tomb of
+the Crucified, without pausing to congratulate the last and living
+crucifier. If there were an Emperor who gave guns and guides and maps and
+drill instructors to defend the remains of the Mongol in Christendom, what
+should we say to him? I think at least we might ask him what he meant by
+his impudence, when he talked about supporting a semi-oriental power. That
+we support a semi-oriental power we deny. That he has supported an entirely
+oriental power cannot be denied--no, not even by the man who did it.
+
+But here is to be noted the essential difference between Russia and
+Prussia; especially by those who use the ordinary Liberal arguments
+against the latter. Russia has a policy which she pursues, if you will,
+through evil and good; but at least so as to produce good as well as
+evil. Let it be granted that the policy has made her oppressive to the
+Finns and the Poles--though the Russian Poles feel far less oppressed than
+do the Prussian Poles. But it is a mere historic fact, that if Russia
+has been a despot to some small nations, she has been a deliverer to
+others. She did, so far as in her lay, emancipate the Servians and the
+Montenegrins. But whom did Prussia ever emancipate--even by accident? It
+is indeed somewhat extraordinary that in the perpetual permutations of
+international politics, the Hohenzollerns have never gone astray into the
+path of enlightenment. They have been in alliance with almost everybody
+off and on: with France, with England, with Austria, with Russia. Can
+anyone candidly say that they have left on any one of these people the
+faintest impress of progress or liberation? Prussia was the enemy of the
+French Monarchy; but a worse enemy of the French Revolution. Prussia had
+been an enemy of the Czar; but she was a worse enemy of the Duma. Prussia
+totally disregarded Austrian rights: but she is to-day quite ready to
+inflict Austrian wrongs. This is the strong particular difference between
+the one empire and the other. Russia is pursuing certain intelligible and
+sincere ends, which to her at least are ideals, and for which, therefore,
+she will make sacrifices and will protect the weak. But the North German
+soldier is a sort of abstract tyrant, everywhere and always on the side of
+materialistic tyranny. This Teuton in uniform has been found in strange
+places; shooting farmers before Saratoga and flogging soldiers in Surrey,
+hanging niggers in Africa and raping girls in Wicklow; but never, by some
+mysterious fatality, lending a hand to the freeing of a single city or the
+independence of one solitary flag. Wherever scorn and prosperous oppression
+are, there is the Prussian; unconsciously consistent, instinctively
+restrictive, innocently evil; "following darkness like a dream."
+
+Suppose we heard of a person (gifted with some longevity) who had helped
+Alva to persecute Dutch Protestants, then helped Cromwell to persecute
+Irish Catholics, and then helped Claverhouse to persecute Scotch Puritans,
+we should find it rather easier to call him a persecutor than to call
+him a Protestant or a Catholic. Curiously enough this is actually the
+position in which the Prussian stands in Europe. No argument can alter
+the fact that in three converging and conclusive cases, he has been on
+the side of three distinct rulers of different religions, who had nothing
+whatever in common except that they were ruling oppressively. In these
+three Governments, taken separately, one can see something excusable or at
+least human. When the Kaiser encouraged the Russian rulers to crush the
+Revolution, the Russian rulers undoubtedly believed they were wrestling
+with an inferno of atheism and anarchy. A Socialist of the ordinary English
+kind cried out upon me when I spoke of Stolypin, and said he was chiefly
+known by the halter called "Stolypin's Necktie." As a fact, there were many
+other things interesting about Stolypin besides his necktie: his policy of
+peasant proprietorship, his extraordinary personal courage, and certainly
+none more interesting than that movement in his death agony, when he made
+the sign of the cross towards the Czar, as the crown and captain of his
+Christianity. But the Kaiser does not regard the Czar as the captain of
+Christianity. Far from it. What he supported in Stolypin was the necktie
+and nothing but the necktie: the gallows and not the cross. The Russian
+ruler did believe that the Orthodox Church was orthodox. The Austrian
+Archduke did really desire to make the Catholic Church catholic. He did
+really believe that he was being Pro-Catholic in being Pro-Austrian. But
+the Kaiser cannot be Pro-Catholic, and therefore cannot have been really
+Pro-Austrian, he was simply and solely Anti-Servian. Nay, even in the cruel
+and sterile strength of Turkey, anyone with imagination can see something
+of the tragedy and therefore of the tenderness of true belief. The worst
+that can be said of the Moslems is, as the poet put it, they offered to
+man the choice of the Koran or the sword. The best that can be said for
+the German is that he does not care about the Koran, but is satisfied if
+he can have the sword. And for me, I confess, even the sins of these three
+other striving empires take on, in comparison, something that is sorrowful
+and dignified: and I feel they do not deserve that this little Lutheran
+lounger should patronise all that is evil in them, while ignoring all that
+is good. He is not Catholic, he is not Orthodox, he is not Mahomedan. He
+is merely an old gentleman who wishes to share the crime though he cannot
+share the creed. He desires to be a persecutor by the pang without the
+palm. So strongly do all the instincts of the Prussian drive against
+liberty, that he would rather oppress other people's subjects than think
+of anybody going without the benefits of oppression. He is a sort of
+disinterested despot. He is as disinterested as the devil who is ready to
+do anyone's dirty work.
+
+This would seem obviously fantastic were it not supported by solid facts
+which cannot be explained otherwise. Indeed it would be inconceivable
+if we were thinking of a whole people, consisting of free and varied
+individuals. But in Prussia the governing class is really a governing
+class: and a very few people are needed to think along these lines to make
+all the other people act along them. And the paradox of Prussia is this:
+that while its princes and nobles have no other aim on this earth but to
+destroy democracy wherever it shows itself, they have contrived to get
+themselves trusted, not as wardens of the past but as forerunners of the
+future. Even they cannot believe that their theory is popular, but they
+do believe that it is progressive. Here again we find the spiritual chasm
+between the two monarchies in question. The Russian institutions are, in
+many cases, really left in the rear of the Russian people, and many of the
+Russian people know it. But the Prussian institutions are supposed to be
+in advance of the Prussian people, and most of the Prussian people believe
+it. It is thus much easier for the war-lords to go everywhere and impose
+a hopeless slavery upon everyone, for they have already imposed a sort of
+hopeful slavery on their own simple race.
+
+And when men shall speak to us of the hoary iniquities of Russia and of
+how antiquated is the Russian system, we shall answer "Yes; that is the
+superiority of Russia." Their institutions are part of their history,
+whether as relics or fossils. Their abuses have really been uses: that
+is to say, they have been used up. If they have old engines of terror
+or torment, they may fall to pieces from mere rust, like an old coat of
+armour. But in the case of the Prussian tyranny, if it be tyranny at all,
+it is the whole point of its claim that it is not antiquated, but just
+going to begin, like the showman. Prussia has a whole thriving factory of
+thumbscrews, a whole humming workshop of wheels and racks, of the newest
+and neatest pattern, with which to win back Europe to the Reaction ...
+_infandum renovare dolorem_ And if we wish to test the truth of this, it
+can be done by the same method which showed us that Russia, if her race or
+religion could sometimes make her an invader and an oppressor, could also
+be made an emancipator and a knight errant. In the same way, if the Russian
+institutions are old-fashioned, they honestly exhibit the good as well as
+the bad that can be found in old-fashioned things.
+
+In their police system they have an inequality which is against our ideas
+of law. But in their commune system they have an equality that is older
+than law itself. Even when they flogged each other like barbarians, they
+called upon each other by their Christian names like children. At their
+worst they retained all the best of a rude society. At their best, they
+are simply good, like good children or good nuns. But in Prussia, all that
+is best in the civilised machinery is put at the service of all that is
+worst in the barbaric mind. Here again the Prussian has no accidental
+merits, none of those lucky survivals, none of those late repentances,
+which make the patchwork glory of Russia. Here all is sharpened to a point
+and pointed to a purpose, and that purpose, if words and acts have any
+meaning at all, is the destruction of liberty throughout the world.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THE ESCAPE OF FOLLY
+
+
+In considering the Prussian point of view, we have been considering what
+seems to be mainly a mental limitation: a kind of knot in the brain.
+Towards the problem of Slav population, of English colonisation, of French
+armies and reinforcements, it shows the same strange philosophic sulks.
+So far as I can follow it, it seems to amount to saying "It is very wrong
+that you should be superior to me, because I am superior to you." The
+spokesmen of this system seem to have a curious capacity for concentrating
+this entanglement or contradiction, sometimes into a single paragraph, or
+even a single sentence. I have already referred to the German Emperor's
+celebrated suggestion that in order to avert the peril of Hunnishness we
+should all become Huns. A much stronger instance is his more recent order
+to his troops touching the war in Northern France. As most people know,
+his words ran "It is my Royal and Imperial command that you concentrate
+your energies, for the immediate present, upon one single purpose, and that
+is that you address all your skill and all the valour of my soldiers to
+exterminate first the treacherous English and to walk over General French's
+contemptible little army." The rudeness of the remark an Englishman can
+afford to pass over; what I am interested in is the mentality, the train
+of thought that can manage to entangle itself even in so brief a space.
+If French's little Army is contemptible, it would seem clear that all the
+skill and valour of the German Army had better not be concentrated on it,
+but on the larger and less contemptible allies. If all the skill and valour
+of the German Army are concentrated on it, it is not being treated as
+contemptible. But the Prussian rhetorician had two incompatible sentiments
+in his mind; and he insisted on saying them both at once. He wanted to
+think of an English Army as a small thing; but he also wanted to think of
+an English defeat as a big thing. He wanted to exult, at the same moment,
+in the utter weakness of the British in their attack; and the supreme
+skill and valour of the Germans in repelling such an attack. Somehow
+it must be made a common and obvious collapse for England; and yet a
+daring and unexpected triumph for Germany. In trying to express these
+contradictory conceptions simultaneously, he got rather mixed. Therefore
+he bade Germania fill all her vales and mountains with the dying agonies of
+this almost invisible earwig; and let the impure blood of this cockroach
+redden the Rhine down to the sea.
+
+But it would be unfair to base the criticism on the utterance of any
+accidental and hereditary prince: and it is quite equally clear in the
+case of the philosophers who have been held up to us, even in England, as
+the very prophets of progress. And in nothing is it shown more sharply
+than in the curious confused talk about Race and especially about the
+Teutonic Race. Professor Harnack and similar people are reproaching us,
+I understand, for having broken "the bond of Teutonism": a bond which the
+Prussians have strictly observed both in breach and observance. We note
+it in their open annexation of lands wholly inhabited by negroes, such as
+Denmark. We note it equally in their instant and joyful recognition of
+the flaxen hair and light blue eyes of the Turks. But it is still the
+abstract principle of Professor Harnack which interests me most; and in
+following it I have the same complexity of inquiry, but the same simplicity
+of result. Comparing the Professor's concern about "Teutonism" with his
+unconcern about Belgium, I can only reach the following result: "A man
+need not keep a promise he has made. But a man must keep a promise he has
+not made." There certainly was a treaty binding Britain to Belgium; if
+it was only a scrap of paper. If there was any treaty binding Britain to
+Teutonism it is, to say the least of it, a lost scrap of paper; almost
+what one would call a scrap of waste-paper. Here again the pedants under
+consideration exhibit the illogical perversity that makes the brain reel.
+There is obligation and there is no obligation: sometimes it appears that
+Germany and England must keep faith with each other; sometimes that Germany
+need not keep faith with anybody and anything; sometimes that we alone
+among European peoples are almost entitled to be Germans; sometimes that
+besides us, Russians and Frenchmen almost rise to a Germanic loveliness of
+character. But through all there is, hazy but not hypocritical, this sense
+of some common Teutonism.
+
+Professor Haeckel, another of the witnesses raised up against us, attained
+to some celebrity at one time through proving the remarkable resemblance
+between two different things by printing duplicate pictures of the same
+thing. Professor Haeckel's contribution to biology, in this case, was
+exactly like Professor Harnack's contribution to ethnology. Professor
+Harnack knows what a German is like. When he wants to imagine what an
+Englishman is like, he simply photographs the same German over again. In
+both cases there is probably sincerity as well as simplicity. Haeckel
+was so certain that the species illustrated in embryo really are closely
+related and linked up, that it seemed to him a small thing to simplify it
+by mere repetition. Harnack is so certain that the German and Englishman
+are almost alike, that he really risks the generalisation that they are
+exactly alike. He photographs, so to speak, the same fair and foolish face
+twice over; and calls it a remarkable resemblance between cousins. Thus, he
+can prove the existence of Teutonism just about as conclusively as Haeckel
+has proved the more tenable proposition of the non-existence of God.
+
+Now the German and the Englishman are not in the least alike--except
+in the sense that neither of them are negroes. They are, in everything
+good and evil, more unlike than any other two men we can take at random
+from the great European family. They are opposite from the roots of
+their history, nay of their geography. It is an understatement to call
+Britain insular. Britain is not only an island, but an island slashed by
+the sea till it nearly splits into three islands; and even the Midlands
+can almost smell the salt. Germany is a powerful, beautiful and fertile
+inland country, which can only find the sea by one or two twisted and
+narrow paths, as people find a subterranean lake. Thus the British Navy
+is really national because it is natural; it has cohered out of hundreds
+of accidental adventures of ships and shipmen before Chaucer's time and
+after it. But the German Navy is an artificial thing; as artificial as a
+constructed Alp would be in England. William II. has simply copied the
+British Navy as Frederick II. copied the French Army: and this Japanese
+or ant-like assiduity in imitation is one of the hundred qualities which
+the Germans have and the English markedly have not. There are other German
+superiorities which are very much superior.
+
+The one or two really jolly things that the Germans have got are precisely
+the things which the English haven't got: notably a real habit of popular
+music and of the ancient songs of the people, not merely spreading from
+the towns or caught from the professionals. In this the Germans rather
+resemble the Welsh; though heaven knows what becomes of Teutonism if
+they do. But the difference between the Germans and the English goes
+deeper than all these signs of it; they differ more than any other two
+Europeans in the normal posture of the mind. Above all, they differ in
+what is the most English of all English traits; that shame which the
+French may be right in calling "the bad shame"; for it is certainly mixed
+up with pride and suspicion, the upshot of which we called shyness. Even
+an Englishman's rudeness is often rooted in his being embarrassed. But
+a German's rudeness is rooted in his never being embarrassed. He eats
+and makes love noisily. He never feels a speech or a song or a sermon or
+a large meal to be what the English call "out of place" in particular
+circumstances. When Germans are patriotic and religious, they have no
+reaction against patriotism and religion as have the English and the
+French.
+
+Nay, the mistake of Germany in the modern disaster largely arose from the
+facts that she thought England was simple, when England is very subtle.
+She thought that because our politics have become largely financial that
+they had become wholly financial; that because our aristocrats had become
+pretty cynical that they had become entirely corrupt. They could not seize
+the subtlety by which a rather used-up English gentleman might sell a
+coronet when he would not sell a fortress; might lower the public standards
+and yet refuse to lower the flag.
+
+In short, the Germans are quite sure that they understand us entirely,
+because they do not understand us at all. Possibly if they began to
+understand us they might hate us even more: but I would rather be hated for
+some small but real reason, than pursued with love on account of all kinds
+of qualities which I do not possess and which I do not desire. And when the
+Germans get their first genuine glimpse of what modern England is like,
+they will discover that England has a very broken, belated and inadequate
+sense of having an obligation to Europe, but no sort of sense whatever of
+having any obligation to Teutonism.
+
+This is the last and strongest of the Prussian qualities we have here
+considered. There is in stupidity of this sort a strange slippery
+strength: because it can be not only outside rules but outside reason. The
+man who really cannot see that he is contradicting himself has a great
+advantage in controversy; though the advantage breaks down when he tries
+to reduce it to simple addition, to chess, or to the game called war. It
+is the same about the stupidity of the one-sided kinship. The drunkard who
+is quite certain that a total stranger is his long-lost brother, has a
+greater advantage until it comes to matters of detail. "We must have chaos
+within," said Nietzsche, "that we may give birth to a dancing star."
+
+In these slight notes I have suggested the principal strong points of
+the Prussian character. A failure in honour which almost amounts to a
+failure in memory: an egomania that is honestly blind to the fact that
+the other party is an ego; and, above all, an actual itch for tyranny
+and interference, the devil which everywhere torments the idle and the
+proud. To these must be added a certain mental shapelessness which can
+expand or contract without reference to reason or record; a potential
+infinity of excuses. If the English had been on the German side, the
+German professors would have noted what irresistible energies had evolved
+the Teutons. As the English are on the other side, the German professors
+will say that these Teutons were not sufficiently evolved. Or they will
+say that they were just sufficiently evolved to show that they were not
+Teutons. Probably they will say both. But the truth is that all that they
+call evolution should rather be called evasion. They tell us they are
+opening windows of enlightenment and doors of progress. The truth is that
+they are breaking up the whole house of the human intellect, that they
+may abscond in any direction. There is an ominous and almost monstrous
+parallel between the position of their over-rated philosophers and of their
+comparatively under-rated soldiers. For what their professors call roads of
+progress are really routes of escape.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11560 ***