r military purposes. Lacking arguments,
their system of defense is at times disconcerting in its naivete.

"Is it possible," they say, "that we should be accused of wishing to
destroy artistic monuments, we, the people above all others who venerate
art, in whom is instilled this respect from infancy, who have the
greatest number of text books and historical collections of art and the
longest list of lectures on aesthetics? Is it possible to accuse of the
most barbarous actions the most humane, the most affectionate, and the
most homely of peoples?"

The idea never strikes them that Germany is not constituted by a single
race of men, and that besides the obedient masses who are born to obey,
to respect the law--all the laws--there is the race which commands,
which believes itself above all laws, and which makes and unmakes them
in the name of force and necessity (_Not_....) It is this evil marriage
of idealism and German force which leads to these disasters. The
idealism proves to be a woman; a woman captive, who like so many worthy
German wives, worships her lord and master, and refuses even to think
that he could ever be wrong.

It is, however, necessary for the salvation of Germany that she should
one day countenance the thought of divorce, or that the wife should have
the courage to make her voice heard in the household. I already know
several who are beginning to champion the rights of the spirit against
force. Many a German voice has reached us lately in letters protesting
against war and deploring with us the injustices which we deplore. I
will not give their names in order not to compromise them. Not very
long ago I told the "Fair"[8] which obstructed Paris that it was not
France. I say today to the German Fair, "You are not the true Germany."
There exists another Germany juster and more humane, whose ambition is
not to dominate the world by force and guile, but to absorb in peace
everything great in the thought of other races, and in return to reflect
the harmony. With that Germany there is no dispute; we are not her
enemies, we are the enemies of those who have almost succeeded in making
the world forget that she still lives.

_October 1914._

Edition des _Cahiers Vaudois_ 10 cahier, 1914 (Lausanne, C. Tarin).

III. ABOVE THE BATTLE

O young men that shed your blood with so generous a joy for the starving
earth! O heroism of the world! What a harvest for destruction to reap
under this splendid s