and they crouch and crawl instead of
standing upright like free and fearless men, and giving the devil's
agent the straightest eye-puncher of which the human arm is capable. I
thank Heaven, Sir, that I'm not made on that plan. I'm out to fight
humbug and hypocrisy, even when they masquerade as friendship and
benevolence; and when I see a fellow coming along with hundreds of pious
texts in his mouth, and his hands dripping with the blood of innocent
women and children, why, I've got to say what I think of him or die. For
my own part--

"On Bible stilts I don't affect to stalk,
Nor lard with Scripture my familiar talk;
For man may pious texts repeat
And yet religion have no inward seat."

A man called HOOD wrote that nearly eighty years ago, but it's quite
true still. I wonder what he would have written if he'd had the bad luck
to know about you and your disgusting appeals to the Almighty, whom you
treat as if He were always waiting round the corner to be decorated with
the Iron Cross.

Now mind, I don't want you to deceive yourself. If I dislike you and
feel as if I'd sooner kick you than shake hands with you, it isn't
because I'm a peace-at-any-price man. No man can say that about me
without qualifying for a place within easy reach of ANANIAS; but when I
decide to take part in a scrap--and there's few scraps going that I
don't butt into sooner or later--I like to feel that I've got a bit of
right on my side. But how can _you_ feel that when you over-run Belgium
and burn down Louvain--that's the place that made your heart bleed,
bah!--and when you shoot down Belgian hostages and do to death an
English nurse? All that never seems to strike you. You go on thinking of
yourself as a holy humble man whom everybody wilfully mistakes for a
bully and a tyrant. Well, you can't fool everybody all the time, you
know, and in this case it happens that everybody has got some sound
horse-sense in his head. Who wanted to hurt you? You'd put together a
great army and your commercial prosperity was a pretty good business
proposition. You'd got a navy and you'd got a very meek and submissive
people, which didn't prevent them from being harsh and domineering and
cruel so far as other peoples were concerned. If you wanted to have folk
afraid of you there were plenty to humour you by pretending to tremble
when you frowned and shook your head. But you weren't going to be
satisfied. You must have a war so as to show what a great ge