tances, I should sympathise
with such a complaint made by a European people. But the circumstances
are not ordinary. Here, again, the quiet unique barbarism of Prussia
goes deeper than what we call barbarities. About mere barbarities, it
is true, the Turco and the Sikh would have a very good reply to the
superior Teuton. The general and just reason for not using non-European
tribes against Europeans is that given by Chatham against the use of the
Red Indian: that such allies might do very diabolical things. But the
poor Turco might not unreasonably ask, after a week-end in Belgium, what
more diabolical things he _could_ do than the highly cultured Germans
were doing themselves. Nevertheless, as I say, the justification of any
extra-European aid goes deeper than any such details. It rests upon
the fact that even other civilisations, even much lower civilisations,
even remote and repulsive civilisations, depend as much as our own on
this primary principle, on which the super-morality of Potsdam declares
open War. Even savages promise things; and respect those who keep their
promises. Even Orientals write things down: and though they write them
from right to left, they know the importance of a scrap of paper. Many
merchants will tell you that the word of the sinister and almost unhuman
Chinaman is often as good as his bond: and it was amid palm trees and
Syrian pavilions that the great utterance opened the tabernacle to him that
sweareth to his hurt and changeth not. There is doubtless a dense labyrinth
of duplicity in the East, and perhaps more guile in the individual Asiatic
than in the individual German. But we are not talking of the violations
of human morality in various parts of the world. We are talking about a
new and inhuman morality, which denies altogether the day of obligation.
The Prussians have been told by their literary men that everything depends
upon Mood: and by their politicians that all arrangements dissolve before
"necessity." That is the importance of the German Chancellor's phrase. He
did not allege some special excuse in the case of Belgium, which might
make it seem an exception that proved the rule. He distinctly argued, as
on a principle applicable to other cases, that victory was a necessity
and honour was a scrap of paper. And it is evident that the half-educated
Prussian imagination really cannot get any farther than this. It cannot
see that if everybody's action were entirely incalculable from h