The Prussian Mind

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN,--Not long after the beginning of the war I asked a German (now deceased) in the United States with whom I had long been acquainted--I thought I knew him, but this proved to be a mistake--to let me know the best and most approved works by his countrymen concerning the causes of the war. He gave me the names of several; I procured them all and read them with care more than once.

The self-exhibition of the Prussian mind made in these books is so striking that it seemed to me that a Canadian audience might welcome some account of it. Accordingly when I was asked to address this Club, I determined to say something to you based upon the reading recommended by my German acquaintance.

Let me begin by saying that by profession a judge, I have tried to enter into the mind of the Prussian intelligently--I have (at least, as an intellectual exercise) endeavoured to "think Germanically." The result has been in my case as it was in the case of many others, neutral and belligerent: as I have in substance said elsewhere

"I find it impossible even to follow the reasoning of some of these apologies. To show that I am not singular in this incapacity, let me quote what has been recently said of and by Charles Francis Adams, an American of the Americans, a real statesman and a scholar of the highest type. In the New York Evening Post I find the following (written immediately after his death): ' He was intensely alive to all that was going on in the world. Needless to say, the European war set all his fibres tingling. His general position of hostility to the Germans was made known in letters to the English press. They were naturally more restrained than his personal talk and correspondence. From a private letter written by him no longer ago than March 13, the following characteristic passage may be taken; it was Mr. Adams' comment upon the assertion that Americans do not understand Germany because they "cannot think like Germans"

' "Suspecting this in my own case, I have of late confined my reading on this topic almost exclusively to German sources. I have been taking a course in Nietzsche and Treitschke, as also in the German Denkschrift, illumined by excerpts from the German papers in this country and the official utterances of Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg. The result has been most disastrous. It has utterly destroyed my capacity for judicial consideration. I can only say that if what I find in those sources is the capacity to think Germanically, I would rather cease thinking at all. It is the absolute negation of everything which has in the past tended to the elevation of mankind, and the installation in place thereof of a system of thorough dishonesty, emphasized by brutal stupidity. There is a low cunning about it, too, which is to me in the last degree repulsive." '

The book which I especially select for examination now is by a Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld of Berlin, and is entitled "Warum hassen uns die Voelker?"--"Why are we hated by other Nations?" The whole work is based upon the theory that the cause of the war was the hatred for the German people felt by others in Europe, and the plaintive enquiry is made: "Whence comes the hate of the foreigner against the German people? Why are we hated notwithstanding that we are the attacked, notwithstanding that Right, justice

-----------------------------------------------------

*The word which I translate "Justice" is "Maessigung," literally "Moderation." It is the quality of the mind, the disposition, which prevents one from pressing even his rights to an extreme, that of a calm and temperate soul, willing to give up its own rather than seem to be unfair. All the world will at once recognize a prominent indeed the prominent, Prussian characteristic and Humanity * stand on our side?" "When in August of the present year one country after another threatened us with war, many German men and particularly German women were not a little astounded at the fearful hatred of Germany which unfolded itself before their eyes. Such a height of enmity, they had not expected against a people who they knew loved peace and work, abhorred cruelty and barbarity ** and was conscious of no hatred towards other peoples."

-----------------------------------------------------

That is the story--gentle, meek, humane, innocent Germany, desiring only to be left in peace at her honest toil, but hated without her fault by other nations--and that when nearly half a million subjects of the Empire were abroad at the beginning of the war. Why, actually the Press of Russia, England and Belgium brand that lovable people as Huns! What can be the reason?

The absurd theory is rightly rejected, that an explanation is to be found in the fact that the clothes of the Germans are displeasing to others, and the equally absurd ones that their too positive and impudent *** manners, their way of praising and blaming, their manner of wearing the mustache, a certain want of good form, of lovableness grating on the foreigner, are similarly rejected by the author. He rightly says that, granting all these defects, they might excite criticism and derision, but could never be a sufficient cause for national hatred and open war.

The Foreign Press has for a long time been sowing the poisonous seed of which the nations now are reaping the harvest; the papers with the largest circulation are the most prominent in this shameful work. Le Matin and Le Figaro in Paris, The Daily Mail and

-----------------------------------------------------

* "Humanity" is- Menschlichkeit "-human feeling, so notably displayed in Belgium.

** "Greuel and Grausamkeit;" "deeds of horror and savage cruelty." Belgium does not require an explanation of the kind of deeds Germany said she abhorred.

*** "Schneidig" means pert, self-confident, assertive, commercialtraveller-assurance-and-push-like; the possessor looks upon his quality as a virtue, most others look upon it and him as a nuisance

-----------------------------------------------------

The Times in London, the Novoie Vremya in St. Petersburg, the Messagero in Rome, and the yellow press in North and South America sound the same note. Without deciding that most of these journals are in the pay of Anglo-French capitalists, as some maintain, the fact is that with very few exceptions every one in the world has for decades received his news from the Thames and the Seine; and consequently he looks upon Germany not with his own eyes, but with the eyes of the English and the French.

The first important psychological basis for this extended hatred of Germany, is this artificial suggestion: it is no natural national sentiment, but an artificially fanned and nurtured hatred whose ravaging flames now burst out against the Germans.*

This suggestion produced a veritable national insanity in the outside world-a psychical epidemic like the superstitious belief in witchcraft which prevailed in Europe till the middle of the 18th century and to which millions of men fell victims. For "today, thanks to suggestion and psychical infection, millions of persons have fallen prey to insanity, a benevolent people is become malevolent; the most orderly, the most licentious; Germans, 'Vandals,' 'wild Hordes,' 'ravening beasts, or, as an American newspaper sees fit to call them, 'the Apaches of the Nations.' "The author is righteously indignant at such calumnies and brings to mind the truth which Bismarck never in fact forgot, whatever he might say about talk not being companies or words battalions, namely, that a mighty force dwells in lead pencils as well as in lead bullets.

As in physical epidemics, the plague, cholera, etc., one can always trace the infection to some "carrier" or other, so in psychical epidemics there are a very few-often indeed only one who are the carriers of the infection. But there is more than the "carrier"; there is the producer of infection, the very germ of the evil.

-----------------------------------------------------

* The author conjures up from his own consciousness a perpetual and world-wide " Hymn of Hate, " which no one outside of Germany had ever heard of and no one outside of Germany can even now discover.

-----------------------------------------------------

And of the horrible spiritual epidemic of hatred against Germany, the principal germs are three-Suspicion, jealousy, Misconception.* That the German people were not justly an object for suspicion the writer thinks obvious; they were entirely misconceived and jealousy did its deadly work.

Dr. Hirschfeld now finds it necessary, in discussing "carriers," to distinguish three periods--before the war, at the outbreak of the war, and during the war.

Before the war the carrier was that encircling statesman ** on the English throne who employed his short reign in yoking to his chariot one European and non-European nation after another, giving them the hypnotic suggestion that they were threatened by some evil by Germany-the fatherland of his own father, be it said incidentally. "And if now war is declared against us by people like the Russians and Japanese, who have never received anything but good from us, if from the most remote lands savage and semi-savage hordes have been summoned against us, peoples to whom even the name of Germany was as little known as the names of the Sikhs, Gurkas and Spahis were to most of our soldiers, we have to thank for it Edward VII., who, in union with Joseph Chamberlain, made the noose which at the proper time would be drawn and would strangle us." *** But even in England there

-----------------------------------------------------

* "Misstrauen heisst der eine, Missgunst der andere, Missverstand der dritte." " Misstrauen " is distrust, suspicion, etc. " Missgunst" may be disfavour, envy, jealousy, ill-will, etc. "Missverstand" is misunderstanding, misconception, mistake, etc.

** "Einkreisungspolitiker," referring to the common German notion that King Edward VII. employed his whole time in planning and carrying into operation an iron ring round Germany.

*** I have heard a Canadian, a citizen of Toronto, a gentleman with His Majesty's Commission of Colonel, say that he blamed King Edward for this war. I told him that I quite agreed with him; that this war would not have been waged but for King Edward; that the war we should have seen would have been a war with Britain and France disunited as in 1870, in which France would have been overwhelmed and destroyed, Belgium annexed, and then Britain's turn would come to fight single-handed.

Every Canadian, every Briton, every lover of democracy and civilization, .may well say as I do--"Thank God for King Edward VII."

-----------------------------------------------------

was a saving remnant, for, after the decision had been made, "the fourth part of the Ministry, amongst them two of the most prominent, John Morley and John Burns, resigned that they might not be partakers in the blood-guilt of this insane war."

So much for before the war and at the time of its outbreak.

During the war England has exhibited the most remarkable national psychology. "Rightly are we angry at the web of lies which England has, through her Press, spread over the whole world. We can easily see that this, from her standpoint, is simply the systematic use of a weapon of war, a stratagem, as it were. She knows quite well that we never can and never will equal her in the use of this Dumdum artillery-for many of these falsehoods operate like Dumdum bullets -the uprightness and rectitude ** of the German character does not permit it." Listen to that, ye crooked and lying Britons! Germans cannot lie and they would not plot in a neutral country-what liars the Americans are!

"The clearest example of what artificially induced fear, will bring about is afforded us by Belgium. That unwise conduct of Belgium at the outbreak of the warthose fanatical charges of Belgians against German settlers--that firing by civilians upon German troops from the rear--the wild flight of nine-tenths of its inhabitants out of Antwerp shortly before the Germans entered that city--all these can find an explanation only in the fact that to the ill-educated Belgians, the

-----------------------------------------------------

* I doubt if these two ex-Ministers are now proud of their action. Lord Morley's blood even in his aged veins must have been a thousand times moved by the heroism of his countrymen and the Hunnish horrors of the enemy, and he can now have no doubt of the propriety and necessity of the action of his fellow-ministers in declaring war. John Burns bitterly repented almost immediately, but he had mace a fatal mistake and he was denied the honour of acting in a war cabinet. To his credit, however, be it said, that he threw himself into such work as he could do, and has nobly redeemed his temporary hesitation.

** "Geradheit and Aufrichtigkeit." "Geradheit" is literally "straightness," "Aufrichtigkeit," "uprightness."

-----------------------------------------------------

German was painted in such a way as to fill their hearts with panic, terror and blind fear of death."

This requires no commentary. The world knows how that terror was justified to the full and horrors added which it had not entered into the heart of man to conceive. Shrecklichkeit intended to appall and terrorize the world, has but raised all humanity against its inventors and sole licensees. Germany can never raise her head again amongst the civilized nations till she has sincerely repented and put away the unclean thing from her treasures.

After gibing England for her silly fear of Zeppelins, the author gives another instance of induced insanity

"A long time before the war one read in a seriously meant and seriously named book, 'The Spies of the Kaiser,' that the 30,000 waiters in English hotels formed an army of spies"; and this spyphobia resulted in many domiciled Germans being sent to concentration camps. The upright German is, of course, above spying in England, whatever he may be in the United States.*

In the perpetual recurrence to the villainies of England, the Doctor does not lose sight of France, "who hates us from the heart because the wounds still rankle which we inflicted on her in 1870-71."

But these wounds were healing and France was reconciling herself to the inevitable when England came and "bored deep the thorn into the old scar."

"And Russia? Why do the Russian people hate us, that is, if they do really hate us?" (for the gentle and kindly Berliner cannot bring himself to believe, that the Russians can really hate the innocent Germans). "Because the ukase of the Czar commands it." But "why does the Czar hate us? Because his entourage have suggested to him that it is his fate which he cannot escape to have a struggle for the mastery with Austria and Germany." That entourage,

-----------------------------------------------------

* A few days ago a Senator of the United States who is usually understood to speak for the Department of justice, said there were more than a hundred thousand German spies in that country; and "if they do these things in a green tree what shall be done in a dry?"

-----------------------------------------------------

composed of mystics like Rasputin, unscrupulous (a lovely touch this !) Archdukes, creatures in the pay of England, persons jealous of the descendants of immigrant Germans.

"Nothing in national life is so dangerous as the fatalistic thought that an explosion must come, if not today, then tomorrow-for many will think better today than tomorrow, and end the unrest and suspense ....then the explosive spark."

Having thus disposed of Russia, the author asks himself on honour and conscience, "Did Germany before the war hate England, France and Russia?" And the answer comes clear and unhesitating: "The overwhelming majority of the German people from Kaiser down treasured for England the most kindly

sentiments, for France feelings of sympathy, for the Russian people pity . . . . with open arms we received English, French, Russian and Japanese like all other peoples . . . . of bitterness, enmity, hatred of the foreigner, envy, not a trace."

But the writer cannot keep away from England--a veritable "King Charles' head" to him, as to all his countrymen. He tells us that, as she had conquered Spain with the aid of Holland in the 16th century, Holland with the aid of France in the 17th, France with the aid of Germany in the 18th and 19th, now it was the turn of Germany. "Envy, nothing else, is the root of this war; all else is deception, conscious or unconscious. When we, through sheer necessity, must needs march through Belgium, after we had assured her (along with Luxembourg) an indemnity, England considered that she had to declare war against us; that after she had on the principle 'Might goes before Right' subdued to her own rule one fourth of the population of the earth, she played the part of Custos morum ** and guardian of virtue .. . . " But

-----------------------------------------------------

* "Verwandtschaftliche,"--"Such as are felt by sympathetic kinsfolk for each other."

** " Sittenrichter,"--"Censor or judge of morality." One can almost see the tear in the eye of the Brandenburger at the very thought of "Macht geht vor Recht" being used as a principle of international conduct.

-----------------------------------------------------

one must be very credulous, indeed, to see in that the real cause of the war. " No! the deeper one delves into the psychology of nations, the more clearly one sees that we are hated, not for our weaknesses, but for our strength; far more do their virtues than their faults make the Germans disliked--not what there is in us to blame, but what there is in us to praise--our achievements and success were a thorn in the eye of our adversaries. Because Germany has become too great, England will make her small, and that is why now she puts other people, France and Russia, forward to fight for her, after her ancient fashion; that is why Germany now sees the flower of her youth bleed in battle."*

Having satisfied himself of the actual cause of the' war, the writer proceeds to investigate the objective foundation for this hideous envy in England's heart--the fons et origo mali.

He finds it in Germany's foreign trade, which twenty-five years ago was but half that of England and little more than that of France, but in 1914 was 85 per cent. of the English and more than 150 percent of the French. England nevertheless should not have complained, for while the German trade increased threefold the English doubled itself, and surely competition should not lead to a struggle for existence. The author then indulges in a long and boastful description of Germany's material progress and wealth, of the increase in population--"in the neighbouring country (France) the number of coffins, even in years of peace, overtakes the number of cradles" (that is irresistible) while on the contrary in Germany the births are more in number than the deaths by 800,000.

But particularly irritating was it to England that Germany began to contest her superiority on the water. Shortly after 1900 Germany wrested from England the blue ribbon for the swiftest Atlantic liner and then she produced the floating palaces Imperator

-----------------------------------------------------

* The writer indulges here in a pun, "Darum blutet jetzt Deutsch, landes Blute." "The flower (bloom) of Germany now bleeds."

-----------------------------------------------------

and Vaterland. If Albion went crazy when the merchant steamers cut into her trade, what tongue can describe her frenzy when the great war fleet made its appearance? Then follows what is to me the most amusing passage in this amusing book; amusing for its naivete, its utter innocence and incapacity to understand from any point of view other than the German. I translate almost literally and almost in full: "Upon still other fields the rivalry of Germany made itself felt by the English. A generation ago, the 'globe trotter' was known, of almost exclusively English growth; it was almost comical to see how for several decades now the travelling Englishman got out of the way of the Germans following him, and they did, in fact, follow him. When the Germans began to travel in Switzerland, the English set up their tents in the Riviera; when this became the resort for Germans, the English turned themselves to South Italy. It was not long before the Germans appeared on the scene here also; and then the 'ladies and gentlemen' struck for Northern Africa, especially Egypt, with ball and racket. But hardly had a few years passed before the German cousin bobbed up at the edge of the desert and the shores of the Nile; and now the travel was to Ceylon, India and Japan, till at length the Englishman had to confess with a sigh of resignation that nowhere on the earth was it possible for him to escape his fate in the shape of a German."

This is perfectly serious. The German has not the slightest idea that his presence is or can be offensive to "ladies and gentlemen" for reasons which are known to every one who has travelled with them or amongst them, and has seen and heard them dine-or feed. He sagely concludes: "If they (i.e., the English) had more to find fault with in externals, they would have less internal chagrin."

He passes to other grounds of the foreigner's envyscience, civil order, Krupps, Zeppelin, the "Dr. Ingenieur"--and shows that order and freedom are the cardinal principles underlying the German system, and "he who loves order loves peace also." "It was precisely that open, honourable, often somewhat raw and harsh speech and demeanour of the Germans which helped to make them disliked, especially by the elegant French and the English, behind whose reserved composure and full dress smoking jacket, there hides more repression than in our apparent excess of regulations."* The frank and open candour of the German is so well known that we had no need of this eulogium. That he was often rude, raw, coarse, is intended to emphasize his blunt honesty, vice John Bull retired to stiff shirts and smoking jackets.

The openness of the German, his rigid adherence to the truth under all circumstances, is further brought out by the sententious " He who lies is not free," and there we may all agree with the author.

Then follow a long and flowery eulogium of the freedom of spirit and conscience in Germany, and a proper rebuke of the nations which sent Oscar Wilde to the treadmill. "There can be no dispute that English cant and dissimulation and German candour and thoroughness exhibit a difference of national sentiment hard to bridge over"--which leads one to say that it is an infinite pity that Oscar Wilde was sent to the treadmill rather than to Germany, for in that land he would have had an opportunity to exercise his "Offenheit and Grundlichkeit."

A long dissertation over the ignorance concerning Germany and the German people follows:--the "misunderstanding" with which we began **--the author passionately cries : " The German Empire, which our enemies believe they are fighting and the German Empire which they are really fighting are two fundamentally different things. Their hostility is against a nation of savages which does not in fact exist; against a product of the imagination, against a phantom; and

-----------------------------------------------------

* One would almost think he could detect some trace of envy here, were it not that we know that to the Prussian, Berlin contains all the virtues and all the graces.

** It is a constant wail by these people that others do not understand them. The fact is that all the world knows them too well. Ask Belgium, ask the victims of the Zeppelin, ask the murdered victims in the Lusitania, ask Edith Cavell.

-----------------------------------------------------

for this phantom the flower of Germany and Austria will bleed and . . . . also the flower of the French, English, Belgian and Russian nations in battles whose horror it transcends the power of language to describe." Now, after more than two and a half years of war, we on the other side know that the "phantom" is a grim and bloody reality, for we have known the hellish horrors which it perpetrates not only in battle, but in the peaceful villages and country.

But, spite of all that her enemies may say, the truth remains" Deutschland Kultureinheit," Germany a Kulturunit, a land of Kultur, one and indivisible-and there all may agree. The book ends with the words of Schiller

"What is there pure, holy, good in man,

If it be not fighting for our Fatherland?" **

Let no one imagine that this is intentional misrepresentation or simply pose. The Prussian is the product of more than forty years of sedulous training in the belief that he is the superman, his race the superrace, that what he desires is right because he desires it. His conduct is everything which is right and laudable because it is his conduct. He will give the name of old-fashioned virtues to his new-fangled vices; and yet we must not say "new-fangled vices," they are as old as the bottomless pit of which they smell. His grotesque insistence on his nation being the chosen of God, naturally (with his swelled head) leads him to agree with his Kaiser that God is an ally, a junior partner in the firm.

I would quote here a passage from an English work recently published: ***

"We need be under no delusion as to the popularity of the Kaiser among his subjects. He is worshipped

-----------------------------------------------------

* "Hoellenschrecken,"--"hell-horrors," the superlative form of "Schrecklichkeit."

** "Was ist unschuldig, heilig, menschlich gut, Wenn es der Kampf nicht ist ums Vaterland?"

*** "The mark of the Beast," by Sir Theodore Cook (London John Murray), a book written since the beginning of the war.

-----------------------------------------------------

by them all, for he is their supreme ideal, the superman of the whole super-race of seventy million Germans. He preached 'shining armour' and 'mailed fists,' and his people firmly believed every word. 'Madman?' Not much. He gave Germany a development in trade and wealth which was bigger than their wildest dreams. He drove up her birth rate. He typified their glorification of material force. He is, perhaps, the only living sovereign who could have deliberately signed the atrocious lie about the dumdum bullets which he cabled to the President of the United States, and yet preserved the approval of his people. He announced himself as God's vice-gerent on earth and Germany as God's chosen nation. Germany was delighted. She thoroughly agreed. She believed in him right through, and she believes in him still, and she is practising with all her might the gospel he preached and made possible. For the ruthless militarism of Frederick the Great was developed to its highest point by his descendant."

In this Kaiser-worship, as in many other respects, the Germans are in much the same stage of development as the English centuries ago, when the king was almost deified.*

Not unlike the English of Elizabeth's time are the Germans in their lust for material advancement at the expense of other peoples, and they far overtop any generation of Englishmen in their inordinate self-esteem.

Another striking characteristic of the German mind is its childishness. Be it remembered that childishness and utter cruelty are quite reconcilable. The German cannot rid himself of the idea that saying a thing often

-----------------------------------------------------

* I hope I do not offend the susceptibilities of anyone when I refer to the eulogies of King James I, by the translators of the Authorized Version--in any other connection one would be nauseated by the fulsome flattery of the "most dread sovereign,"--like the "Sun in his strength" whose coming "to rule and reign over us" was the cause of "great and manifold . . . . blessings." The conventionalities of official life are still preserved in form, but while we say Kink George is King "by the Grace of God," we know and he knows that he is King by grace of an Act of Parliament.

-----------------------------------------------------

enough will make it true; hence the iteration and reiteration of phrases like "the freedom of the sea." Perhaps the height of childishness was reached when a week or two ago a leading statesman in Germany said "We gave up our marine trade at the beginning of the war, let Britain now do the same and fight with us on equal terms." The cry of brutality against Britain for her blockading policy is repeated again and again. German brutality is justified (not simply excused) by the exigencies of war. Britain's acts, wholly justified as they are by the rules of international law, are characterized as brutal, and sentimental German tears flow from unnumbered eyes at the degeneracy of the English cousins.*

-----------------------------------------------------

* It is noticeable that the German when he claims a cousin across the North Sea always calls him English. He has not yet claimed kindred with the Scot, the Irishman, the Welshman or the Canadian. Even for such small mercies may we be truly thankful!

The flat-faced, square-headed Prussian is akin to the Kalmuck, the Mongolian, not to English, Irish, Scotch or Welsh.

I should like to add here Bernstorff's view of the Lusitania tragedy

"War between Germany and America over the sinking of the Lusitania was avoided, at one stage of the negotiations, by a personal appeal made "as man to man" to President Wilson by Count von Bernstorff, then German Ambassador, who begged the President not to insist that Germany admit that the sinking of the Lusitania was illegal and thereby to throw away his opportunity of becoming the intermediary for peace proposals. This is given as Bernstorff's own statement in an article on the personality and career of the late Ambassador by Frank Harris, editor of Pearson's Magazine, and former editor of the Fortnightly Review and the Saturday Review of London. The article is to be published in the April issue of Pearson's.

This version of the way war was averted was told to Mr. Harris personally, he says, by the German Ambassador.

Mark the insistence on the word "illegal" as though the horror could be diminished by the omission of the word.

"Bernstorff himself," says Mr. Harris, "did not approve of the morality of the sinking of the Lusitania, even on the theory that it was retaliation for the illegality of the British blockade.

" 'You should not meet illegality by lowering your own ethical standard,' he argued, 'otherwise the antagonists would go down by successive steps to brute atrocities. You have to protest against illegalities and keep the law yourself the more rigidly. I had no difficulty in promising that the Lusitania incident would not be repeated though it would be wrong to speak of it as 'illegal', for ships carrying contraband are fair prey now as they always have been.

-----------------------------------------------------

Just now is the cry, Peace, Peace, when there is no Peace; there can be no Peace. The German may "bless himself in his heart, saying, I shall have peace though I walk in the imagination of my heart," but "there is no Peace", saith the Lord unto the wicked.

And yet there is mighty good in these modern Huns; their sense of order and willing obedience to authority, their burning patriotism, their unwearied diligence and minute accuracy all make for good, and we may hope that a great people will rise when they awake from the dream of superhumanity, when they acknowledge that other peoples have their virtues, when their eyes are opened to the hollow sham of their fetich, the Kaiser, with his megalomaniac patronizing of the Almighty, when they will shudder at the blasphemy of the "good old German God," when the awful horror of their deeds of infamy in Belgium is realized, when they have repented in sackcloth and ashes and have learned that it is not military prowess but righteousness which exalteth a nation.

A hearty vote of thanks was passed.

But we Germans are not afraid that high standards will bring us to defeat. We are all, I repeat, moralists, believers in moral right, and perhaps, therefore, too careless of manners, too disdainful of courtesies.' "

And he adds in a burst of generosity

"'I have no hates in me,' he said to me once; 'the worst of me is I cannot hate. I cannot hate even Grey. I know you are right, I'm sure he is a man of high character and intense patriotism. It is a pity he goes in blinkers and cannot see us Germans as we are.'"

The real trouble, of course, is that Grey knows "us Germans" quite too well.