lf-contradictory, or broken-minded generally. If
you have something to teach us, teach it to us now. If you propose to
convert us after you have conquered us, why not convert us before you
have conquered us? As it is, we cannot believe what you say about your
superior education because of the way in which you say it. If an
Englishman says, "I don't make no mistakes in English, not me," we can
understand his remark; but we cannot endorse it. To say, "Je parler le
Frenche language, non demi," is comprehensible, but not convincing. And
when you say, as you did in a recent appeal to the Americans, that the
Germanic Powers have sacrificed a great deal of "red fluid" in defence
of their culture, we point out to you that cultured people do not employ
such a literary style. Or when you say that the Belgians were so
ignorant as to think they were being butchered when they weren't, we
only wonder whether _you_ are so ignorant as to think you are being
believed when you aren't. Thus, for instance, when you brag about
burning Venice to express your contempt for "tourists," we cannot think
much of the culture, as culture, which supposes St. Mark's to be a thing
for tourists instead of historians. This, however, would be the least
part of our unfavourable judgment. That judgment is complete when we
have read such a paragraph as this, prominently displayed in a paper in
which you specially spread yourself: "That the Italians have a perfect
knowledge of the fact that this city of antiquities and tourists is
subject, and rightly subject, to attack and bombardment, is proved by
the measures they took at the beginning of the war to remove some of
their greatest art treasures." Now culture may or may not include the
power to admire antiquities, and to restrain oneself from the pleasure
of breaking them like toys. But culture does, presumably, include the
power to think. For less laborious intellects than your own it is
generally sufficient to think once. But if you will think twice or
twenty times, it cannot but dawn on you that there is something wrong in
the reasoning by which the placing of diamonds in a safe proves that
they are "rightly subject" to a burglar. The incessant assertion of such
things can do little to spread your superior culture; and if you say
them too often people may even begin to doubt whether you have any
superior culture after all. The earnest friend now advising you cannot
but grieve at such incautious garrulity. If