I am not saying that our qualities, good or bad, commend us very readily to strangers.  The people of England, on the whole, are respected more than they are liked.  When I call them fanciers of other nations, I feel it only fair to add that some of those other nations express the same truth in different language.  I have often heard the complaint made that Englishmen cannot speak of foreigners without an air of patronage.  It is impossible to deny this charge, for, in a question of manners, the impressions you produce are your manners; and there is no doubt about this impression.  There is a certain coldness about the upright and humane Englishman which repels and intimidates any trivial human being who approaches him.  Most men would forgo their claim to justice for the chance of being liked.  They would rather have their heads broken, or accept a bribe, than be the objects of a dispassionate judgement, however kindly.  They feel this so strongly that they experience a dull discomfort in any relationship that is not tinctured with passion.  As there are many such relationships, not to be avoided even by the most emotional natures, they escape from them by simulating lively feeling, and are sometimes exaggerated and insincere in manner.  They issue a very large paper currency on a very small gold reserve.  This, which is commonly known as the Irish Question, is an insoluble problem, for it is a clash not of interests but of temperaments.  The English, it must in fairness be admitted, do as they would be done by.  No Englishman pure and simple is incommoded by the coldness of strangers.  He prefers it, for there are many stupid little businesses in the world, which are falsified when they are made much of; and even when important facts are to be told, he would rather have them told in a dreary manner.  He hates a fuss.

The Germans, who are a highly emotional and excitable people, have concentrated all their energy on a few simple ideas.  Their moral outlook is as narrow as their geographical outlook is wide.  Will their faith prevail by its intensity, narrow and false though it be?  I cannot prove that it will not, but I have a suspicion, which I think has already occurred to some of them, that the world is too large and wilful and strong to be mastered by them.  We have seen what their hatchets and explosives can do, and they are nearing the end of their resources.  They can still repeat some of their old exploits, but they make no headway, and time is not their friend.

One service, perhaps, they have done to civilization.  There is a growing number of people who hold that when this War is over international relations must not be permitted to slip back into the unstable condition which tempted the Germans to their crime.  A good many pacific theorists, no doubt, have not the experience and the imagination which would enable them to pass a useful judgement, or to make a valuable suggestion, on the affairs of nations.  The abolition of war