rnal. It is a terrible moment, I grant. Your fatherland as
ours struggles for its life, and I understand and admire the ecstasy of
sacrifice which impels your youth, as ours, to make of its body a
rampart against death. "To be or not to be," do you say? No, that is not
enough. To be the great Germany, to be the great France, worthy of their
past, and respecting one another even while fighting, that is what I
wish. I should blush for victory if my France bought it at the price for
which you will pay for your temporary success. Even while the battles
are being fought upon the plains of Belgium and amongst the chalky
slopes of Champagne, another war is taking place upon the field of the
spirit, and often victory below means defeat above. The conquest of
Belgium, Malines, Louvain and Rheims, the carillons of Flanders, will
sound a sadder knell in your history than the bells of Jena; and the
conquered Belgians have robbed you of your glory. You know it. You are
enraged because you know it. What is the good of vainly trying to
deceive yourselves? Truth will be clear to you in the end. You have done
your best to silence her--one day she will speak; she will speak by the
mouth of one of your own in whom will be awakened the conscience of your
race.... Oh, that he may soon appear and that we may hear his voice--the
pure and noble voice of the redeemer who shall set you free! He who has
lived in the intimacy of your old Germany, who has clasped her hand in
the twisted streets of her heroic and sordid past, who has caught the
breath of her centuries of trials and shames, remembers and waits: for
he knows that even if she has never proved strong enough to bear victory
without wavering, it is in her hours of trouble that she reforms
herself, and her greatest geniuses are sons of sorrow.

_September 1914._

* * * * *

Since these lines were written I have watched the birth of the anxiety
which little by little is making its way into the consciences of the
good people of Germany. First a secret doubt, kept under by a stubborn
effort to believe the bad arguments collected by their Government to
oppose it--documents fabricated to prove that Belgium had renounced her
neutrality herself, false allegations (in vain repudiated four times by
the French Government, by the Commander-in-Chief, by the Cardinal and
the Archbishop, and by the Mayor of Rheims)--accusing the French of
using the Cathedral of Rheims fo