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