as well as to others, capable of extremes of self-denial and self-discipline.  From the Prussians the softer and more emotional German peoples of the South received the gift of national unity, and they repaid the debt by extravagant admiration for Prussian prowess and hardihood, which had been so serviceable to their cause.  The Southern Germans, the Bavarians especially, have developed a sort of sentimentalism of brutality, expressed in the hysterical Hymn of Hate (which hails from Munich), expressed also in those monstrous excesses and cruelties, surpassing anything that mere insensibility can produce, which have given the Bavarian troops their foul reputation in the present war.

The last half century of German history must also be remembered.  Three assaults on neighbouring states were rewarded by a great increase of territory and of strength.  From Denmark, in 1864, Prussia took Schleswig-Holstein.  The defeat of Austria in 1866 brought Hanover and Bavaria under the Prussian leadership; Alsace and Lorraine were regained from France in 1870.  The Prussian mind, which is not remarkable for subtlety, found a justification in these three wars for its favourite doctrine of frightfulness.  That doctrine, put briefly, is that people can always be frightened into submission, and that it is cheaper to frighten them than to fight them to the bitter end.  Denmark was a small nation, and moreover was left utterly unsupported by the European powers who had guaranteed her integrity.  Bavaria was frightened, and will be frightened again when her hot fit gives way to her cold fit.  France was divided and half-hearted under a tinsel emperor.  It is Germany’s misfortune that on these three special cases she based a general doctrine of war.  A very little knowledge of human nature—­a knowledge so alien to her that she calls it psychology and assigns it to specialists—­would have taught her that, for the most part, human beings when they are fighting for their homes and their faith cannot be frightened, and must be killed or conciliated.  The practice of frightfulness has not worked very well in this war.  It has steeled the heart of Germany’s enemies.  It has produced in her victims a temper of hate that will outlive this generation, and will make the small peoples whom she has kicked and trampled on impossible subjects of the German Empire.  Worst of all it has suggested to onlookers that the people who have so plenary a belief in frightfulness are not themselves strangers to fear.  There is an old English proverb, hackneyed and stale three hundred years ago, but now freshened again by disuse, that the goodwife would never have looked for her daughter in the oven unless she had been there herself.