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 là_, 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