there is so much in human nature that Shaw does not approve
of. There are times when one is compelled to a great pity for Shaw. He
seems to have got into the wrong world. He is for ever thanking God
that he is not as we other men--we Englishmen and Germans, mere
publicans and sinners. It is a difficult world to understand, I admit,
my dear Shaw, full of inconsistencies and contradictions. Perhaps
there is a meaning in it somewhere that you have missed.

Perhaps we have got to fight one another before we understand one
another. In the old Norse mythology Love is the wife of Strife; when
we come to consider the nature of man, not such an odd union as it
appears.

So long as the law runs that in sorrow woman shall bring forth her
child; so long as the ground shall yield to the sons of Adam thorns
also and thistles, so long will there be strife between man and man.
So long, when the last word has been spoken and has failed, will there
be war between the nations. The only hope of civilization is to treat
it as a game. You cannot enforce a law without a policeman. You can
only appeal to a man's honor--to his sporting instincts.

The mistake Germany is making is in not treating war as a game. To do
so would be weakness and frivolity. War must be ruthless, must be
frightful. It is not to be bound down by laws human or Divine. And
even then she is not logical. Two German officers interned in Holland
are released on parole. Taking their country at her word, they hasten
back to rejoin their regiments. The German Staff is shocked, sends
them back to be imprisoned.

So there really are rules to the game. An officer and gentleman may
not lie. If a Sub-Lieutenant may not lie for the sake of his country,
then what argument gives the right to the German Government to tear up
its treaties, to the German Military Staff to disregard its
Ambassador's signature to The Hague Convention?

Come, shade of Bismarck, and your disciples in Germany and other
countries, (including a few in my own,) make up your mind. To be
ruthless and frightful in a half-hearted, nervous, vacillating fashion
is ridiculous. You have either got to go back to the beginning of
things, and make war a battle of wild beasts, or you have got to go
forward and make it a game--a grim game, I grant you, but one that the
nations can play at and shake hands afterward. We have tried the
ruthless and frightful method. We used to slaughter the entire
population. To shoot a se