ake any young lady for
what he calls (I deeply regret to say) a joyride; but at least the man goes
with the woman as much as the woman with the man. In France the young woman
is protected like a nun while she is unmarried; but when she is a mother
she is really a holy woman; and when she is a grandmother she is a holy
terror. By both extremes the woman gets something back out of life. There
is only one place where she gets little or nothing back; and that is the
north of Germany. France and America aim alike at equality--America by
similarity; France by dissimilarity. But North Germany does definitely
aim at inequality. The woman stands up, with no more irritation than a
butler; the man sits down, with no more embarrassment than a guest. This is
the cool affirmation of inferiority, as in the case of the sabre and the
tradesman. "Thou goest with women; forget not thy whip," said Nietzsche.
It will be observed that he does not say "poker"; which might come more
naturally to the mind of a more common or Christian wife-beater. But then
a poker is a part of domesticity; and might be used by the wife as well as
the husband. In fact, it often, is. The sword and the whip are the weapons
of a privileged caste.

Pass from the closest of all differences, that between husband and wife,
to the most distant of all differences, that of the remote and unrelated
races who have seldom seen each other's faces, and never been tinged
with each other's blood. Here we still find the same unvarying Prussian
principle. Any European might feel a genuine fear of the Yellow Peril; and
many Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Russians have felt and expressed it. Many
might say, and have said, that the Heathen Chinee is very heathen indeed;
that if he ever advances against us he will trample and torture and utterly
destroy, in a way that Eastern people do, but Western people do not. Nor do
I doubt the German Emperor's sincerity when he sought to point out to us
how abnormal and abominable such a nightmare campaign would be, supposing
that it could ever come. But now comes the comic irony; which never fails
to follow on the attempt of the Prussian to be philosophic. For the Kaiser,
after explaining to his troops how important it was to avoid Eastern
Barbarism, instantly commanded them to become Eastern Barbarians. He told
them, in so many words, to be Huns: and leave nothing living or standing
behind them. In fact, he frankly offered a new army corps of aborigi