For the first matter, the comparative inferiority of German culture cannot be doubted by people like you.  One of the German papers pathetically said that, though the mangling of Malines and Rheims was very sad, it was a comfort to think that yet nobler works of art would spring up wherever the German culture had passed in triumph.  From the point of view of humour, it is really rather sad that they never will.  The German Emperor’s idea of a Gothic cathedral is as provocative to the fancy as Mrs. Todgers’ idea of a wooden leg.  But I think it perfectly probable that they really intended to set up such beautiful buildings as they could.  Having been blasphemous enough to ruin such things, they might well be blasphemous enough to replace them.  Even if the Prussian attempt on Paris had not wholly collapsed as it has, I doubt whether the Prussians would have destroyed everything.  I doubt whether they would even have destroyed the Venus de Milo.  More probably they would have put a pair of arms on it, designed by some rising German artist—­the Emperor or somebody.  And the two arms thus added would look at once like the arms of a woman at a wash-tub.  The destroyers of the tower of Rheims are quite capable of destroying the Tower of Giotto.  But they are equally capable of the greater crime of completing it.  And if they put on a spire, what a spire it would be!  What an extinguisher for that clear and almost transparent Christian candle!  Have you read some of the German explanations of Hamlet?  Did I tell you that Leonardo’s hair must have been German hair, because so many of his contemporaries said it was beautiful?  This is what I call being second-rate.  All the German excitement about the colonies of England is only a half understanding of what was once heroic and is now largely caddish.  The German Emperor’s naval vision is a bad copy of Nelson, as certainly as Frederick the Great’s verses were a bad copy of Voltaire.

But the second point was even more important; that weak as the thing is mentally it is strong materially; and will impose itself materially if we permit it.  The Prussians have failed in everything else; but they have not failed in getting their subject thousands to do as they are told.  They cannot put up black and white towers in Florence; but they can really put up black and white posts in Alsace.  They have failed in diplomacy.  I suppose it might be called a failure in diplomacy to come into the fight with two enemies extra and one ally the less.  If the Germans, instead of sending spies to study the Belgian soil, had sent spies to consider the Belgian soul, they would have been saved hard work for a week or two.  They have failed in controversy.  I suppose it might be called a failure in controversy to say that England may be keeping her word for some wicked purpose; while Germany may be breaking her word for some noble purpose.  And that is practically all that the Germans can manage to say.  They say that we are an insatiable, unscrupulous, piratical