lected few is to court a maximum of contempt
for a minimum of advantage. We used to lay waste the land. We did not
content ourselves with knocking down a church spire and burning a
library. We left not one stone upon another. We sowed salt where the
cities had been. We tortured our prisoners before the ramparts. We did
not "leave them their eyes to weep with"; we burned them out with hot
irons; surely a much swifter means of striking terror! Why not return
to these methods? They sound most effective.

They were not effective. God's chosen people--according to
themselves--did not annihilate the Philistines, not even with the help
of the Ark of the Covenant. The Philistines tightened their belts and
acquitted themselves like men. Today the heathen rules in Canaan.
Where Mohammed failed the shade of Bismarck is not likely to succeed.
Poland is still a sore in European politics. The whole force of the
Vatican could not suppress a handful of reformers. All the
bloodthirsty edicts of the Revolution could not annihilate a few
thousand aristocrats. These things cannot be done. War finishes
nothing, it only interrupts. A nation cannot be killed; it can only
die. This war is not going to be the end of all things either for
Germany or for us. Germany can be beaten to her knees, as she beat
France to her knees in 1870; as more than once before that France has
beaten her. Later on we have all got to live together in peace, for a
while.

Come, gentlemen, let us make an honorable contest of it, that shall
leave as little of bitterness behind it as may be. Let us see if we
cannot make a fine game of it that we shall be all the better for
having played out to the end. From which we shall all come back home
cleaner minded, clearer seeing, made kinder to one another by
suffering. Come, gentlemen, you believe that God has called upon you
to spread German culture through the lands. You are ready to die for
your faith. And we believe God has a use for the thing called England.
Well, let us fight it out. There seems no other way. You for St.
Michael and we for St. George; and God be with us both.

But do not let us lose our common humanity in the struggle. That were
the worst defeat of all--the only defeat that would really matter,
that would really be lasting.

Let us call it a game. After all, what else is it? We have been
playing it since the dawn of creation; and it has settled nothing--but
the names of things. Its victories, its def