the failure of their appeals to a
foreign people. The Prussian writer may continue his attempts to soothe
and charm you by telling you that you are irredeemably lost, and that all
great Italians must have been something else. But the method seems to me
ill adapted to popular propaganda; and I cannot but say that on this third
point of persuasion, the German attempt is not striking.

Now all this is important for this reason. If you consider it carefully
you will see why Europe must, at whatever cost, break Germany in battle:
and put an end to her military and material power to _do_ things. If we all
have to fight for it, if we all have to die for it, it must be done. If we
find allies in the dwarfs of Greenland or the giants of Patagonia, it must
be done. And the reason is that unless it is literally and materially done,
other things will be literally and materially done; and horrify the
heavens. They will be silly things; they will be benighted and limited and
laughable things; but they will be accomplished things. Nothing could be
more ridiculous, if that is all, than the moral position of the Prussian in
Poland; where a magnificent officer, making a vast parade of "ruling,"
tries to cheat poor peasants out of their fields (and gets cheated) and
then takes refuge in beating little boys for saying their prayers in their
native tongue. All who remember anything of dignity, of irony, in short of
Rome and reason, can see why an officer need not, should not, had better
not, and generally does not, beat little boys. But an officer _can_ beat
little boys: and a Prussian officer will go on doing it until you take away
the stick. Nothing could be more comic, if that is all, than the position
of Prussians in Alsace: which they declare to be purely German and admit to
be furiously French; so that they have to terrorise it by sabring anybody,
including cripples. Again, any of us can see why an officer need not,
should not, had better not, and generally does not, sabre a cripple. But an
officer _can_ sabre a cripple; and a Prussian officer will go on doing it
until you take away the sabre. It is this insane and rigid realism that
makes their case peculiar: like that of a Chinaman copying something, or a
half-witted servant taking a message. If they had the power to put black
and white posts round the grave of Virgil, or dig up Dante to see if he had
yellow hair, the mere _doing_ of it which for some of us would be the most
unlikely,