esire the extinction of any white
race. This affair is only a family squabble. But it is a symptom. You
may be watching now the first convulsions of the disease by which Europe
will die. Europe is dying. The war, the war is only a superficial
disturbance. The trouble is deeper than the mud of Flanders, my friend.
Europe is dying because her inspiration, her ideals, are gone. That is
what I mean when I say Europe will die. The old fidelities are
departing. And when they are all dead, and Europe is a vast cesspool of
republicans engaged in mutual extermination, what will happen then, do
you think?"

"Why do you talk that mad stuff here?" grunted one of the guests, a
quiet middle-aged person with a monocle. He spoke in German, and
Lietherthal answered quickly:

"What difference, Oscar? They don't believe me."

"What will happen, I ask you?" he continued in a vibrating tone. "When
we have destroyed ourselves, and the survivors of our civilization are
creeping feebly about the country, going back little by little to the
agricultural age, the yellow men from Asia and the blacks from Africa
will come pouring into Europe. Millions of them. They will infest the
skeletons of our civilizations like swarms of black and yellow maggots
in the sepulchres of kings. And in the end humanity will cease to exist.
Civilization will be dead but there will be nobody to bury her," he
concluded, smiling. "Europe will be full of the odours of her
dissolution."

"I cannot believe," said Mr. Marsh with energy, "that any one would
seriously entertain such wild ideas. They imply the negation of all the
things we hold dear. I should commit suicide at once if I thought for a
single moment such an outcome was possible."

"Perhaps your captain had such a moment," suggested the young man,
busily eating fish. "Perhaps he saw, as I said, the futility of
existence."

"And you really believe there is no hope?"

"Hope!" echoed Lietherthal with a brazen-throated laugh. "Hear the
Englishman crying for his hope! By what right or rule of logic can we
demand an inexhaustible supply of hope, especially packed in
hundredweight crates for export to the British Colonies? Hope! The
finest brand on the market! Will not spoil in the tropics! Stow away
from boilers! Use no hooks! That's all an Englishman thinks of if you
ask him to consider a scientific question. Doctor, is there any hope?
Hope for himself, not for anybody else."

There was a murmur of laughter