ers. And, in ordinary circumstances, I should sympathise with such
a complaint made by a European people. But the circumstances are not
ordinary. Here, again, the quite unique barbarism of Prussia goes deeper
than what we call barbarities. About mere barbarities, it is true, the
Turco and the Sikh would have a very good reply to the superior Teuton.
The general and just reason for not using non-European tribes against
Europeans is that given by Chatham against the use of the Red Indian: that
such allies might do very diabolical things. But the poor Turco might not
unreasonably ask, after a weekend in Belgium, what more diabolical things
he _could_ do than the highly cultured Germans were doing themselves.
Nevertheless, as I say, the justification of any extra-European aid goes
deeper than any such details. It rests upon the fact that even other
civilisations, even much lower civilisations, even remote and repulsive
civilisations, depend as much as our own on this primary principle on which
the super-morality of Potsdam declares open War. Even savages promise
things; and respect those who keep their promises. Even Orientals write
things down: and though they write them from right to left, they know the
importance of a scrap of paper. Many merchants will tell you that the word
of the sinister and almost unhuman Chinaman is often as good as his bond:
and it was amid palm trees and Syrian pavilions that the great utterance
opened the tabernacle, to him that sweareth to his hurt and changeth not.
There is doubtless a dense labyrinth of duplicity in the East, and perhaps
more guile in the individual Asiatic than in the individual German. But we
are not talking of the violations of human morality in various parts of the
world. We are talking about a new and inhuman morality, which denies
altogether the day of obligation. The Prussians have been told by their
literary men that everything depends upon Mood: and by their politicians
that all arrangements dissolve before "necessity." That is the importance
of the German Chancellor's phrase. He did not allege some special excuse in
the case of Belgium, which might make it seem an exception that proved the
rule. He distinctly argued, as on a principle applicable to other cases,
that victory was a necessity and honour was a scrap of paper. And it is
evident that the half-educated Prussian imagination really cannot get any
further than this. It cannot see that if everybody's action were e