they followed the call-back of the beast in the jungle rather than the
voice of the Crucified One whom they pretended to adore.

III

The character of European peoples failed in common sense and in
Christian charity. It did not fail in courage to endure great agonies,
to suffer death largely, to be obedient to the old tradition of
patriotism and to the stoic spirit of old fighting races.

In courage I do not think there was much difference between the chief
combatants. The Germans, as a race, were wonderfully brave until their
spirit was broken by the sure knowledge of defeat and by lack of food.
Many times through all those years they marched shoulder to shoulder,
obedient to discipline, to certain death, as I saw them on the Somme,
like martyrs. They marched for their Fatherland, inspired by the spirit
of the German race, as it had entered their souls by the memory of old
German songs, old heroic ballads, their German home life, their German
women, their love of little old towns on hillsides or in valleys, by
all the meaning to them of that word Germany, which is like the name of
England to us--who is fool enough to think otherwise?--and fought often,
a thousand times, to the death, as I saw their bodies heaped in the
fields of the Somme and round their pill-boxes in Flanders and in the
last phase of the war behind the Hindenburg line round their broken
batteries on the way of Mons and Le Cateau. The German people endured
years of semi-starvation and a drain of blood greater than any other
fighting people--two million dead--before they lost all vitality, hope,
and pride and made their abject surrender. At the beginning they were
out for conquest, inspired by arrogance and pride. Before the end they
fought desperately to defend the Fatherland from the doom which cast its
black shadow on them as it drew near. They were brave, those Germans,
whatever the brutality of individual men and the cold-blooded cruelty of
their commanders.

The courage of France is to me like an old heroic song, stirring the
heart. It was medieval in its complete adherence to the faith of valor
and its spirit of sacrifice for La Patrie. If patriotism were enough as
the gospel of life--Nurse Cavell did not think so--France as a nation
was perfect in that faith. Her people had no doubt as to their duty. It
was to defend their sacred soil from the enemy which had invaded it. It
was to hurl the brutes back from the fair fields they had r