e truth that Germany, though still
largely wicked and impenitent, is being slowly and conclusively beaten
by the sanity, courage and persistence of the Allied common men, then
the Genteel Whig retorts with his last defensive absurdity. He invents a
national psychology for Germany. Germany, he invents, loves us and wants
to be our dearest friend. Germany has always loved us. The Germans are
a loving, unenvious people. They have been a little mislead--but nice
people do not insist upon that fact. But beware of beating Germany,
beware of humiliating Germany; then indeed trouble will come. Germany
will begin to dislike us. She will plan a revenge. Turning aside from
her erstwhile innocent career, she may even think of hate. What are our
obligations to France, Italy, Serbia and Russia, what is the happiness
of a few thousands of the Herero, a few millions of the Belgians--whose
numbers moreover are constantly diminishing--when we might weigh them
against the danger, the most terrible danger, of incurring _permanent
German hostility?..._

A Frenchman I talked to knew better than that. "What will happen to
Germany," I asked, "if we are able to do so to her and so; would she
take to dreams of a _Revanche?_"

"She will take to Anglomania," he said, and added after a flash of
reflection, "In the long run it will be the worse for you."

III. THE RELIGIOUS REVIVAL

1

One of the indisputable things about the war, so far as Britain and
France go--and I have reason to believe that on a lesser scale things
are similar in Italy--is that it has produced a very great volume of
religious thought and feeling. About Russia in these matters we hear
but little at the present time, but one guesses at parallelism. People
habitually religious have been stirred to new depths of reality and
sincerity, and people are thinking of religion who never thought of
religion before. But as I have already pointed out, thinking and feeling
about a matter is of no permanent value unless something is _thought
out_, unless there is a change of boundary or relationship, and it an
altogether different question to ask whether any definite change is
resulting from this universal ferment. If it is not doing so, then the
sleeper merely dreams a dream that he will forget again....

Now in no sort of general popular mental activity is there so much froth
and waste as in religious excitements. This has been the case in all
periods of religious revival. Th