of
their uniforms with ours made a background of pageantry in which it
seemed more and more natural that English and German potentates should
salute each other like cousins, and, in a sense, live in each other's
countries. Thus in 1908 the German Emperor was already regarded as
something of a menace by the English politicians, and as nothing but a
madman by the English people. Yet it did not seem in any way disgusting
or dangerous that Edward VII. should appear upon occasion in a Prussian
uniform. Edward VII. was himself a friend to France, and worked for the
French Alliance. Yet his appearance in the red trousers of a French
soldier would have struck many people as funny; as funny as if he had
dressed up as a Chinaman.

But the German hirelings or allies had another character which (by that
same strain of evil coincidence which we are tracing in this book)
encouraged all that was worst in the English conservatism and
inequality, while discouraging all that was best in it. It is true that
the ideal Englishman was too much of a squire; but it is just to add
that the ideal squire was a good squire. The best squire I know in
fiction is Duke Theseus in "The Midsummer Night's Dream," who is kind to
his people and proud of his dogs; and would be a perfect human being if
he were not just a little bit prone to be kind to both of them in the
same way. But such natural and even pagan good-nature is consonant with
the warm wet woods and comfortable clouds of South England; it never had
any place among the harsh and thrifty squires in the plains of East
Prussia, the land of the East Wind. They were peevish as well as proud,
and everything they created, but especially their army, was made
coherent by sheer brutality. Discipline was cruel enough in all the
eighteenth-century armies, created long after the decay of any faith or
hope that could hold men together. But the state that was first in
Germany was first in ferocity. Frederick the Great had to forbid his
English admirers to follow his regiments during the campaign, lest they
should discover that the most enlightened of kings had only excluded
torture from law to impose it without law. This influence, as we have
seen, left on Ireland a fearful mark which will never be effaced.
English rule in Ireland had been bad before; but in the broadening light
of the revolutionary century I doubt whether it could have continued as
bad, if we had not taken a side that forced us to flatter ba