done, other things will be literally and materially done; and horrify the heavens.  They will be silly things; they will be benighted and limited and laughable things; but they will be accomplished things.  Nothing could be more ridiculous, if that is all, than the moral position of the Prussian in Poland; where a magnificent officer, making a vast parade of “ruling,” tries to cheat poor peasants out of their fields (and gets cheated) and then takes refuge in beating little boys for saying their prayers in their native tongue.  All who remember anything of dignity, of irony, in short of Rome and reason, can see why an officer need not, should not, had better not, and generally does not, beat little boys.  But an officer can beat little boys:  and a Prussian officer will go on doing it until you take away the stick.  Nothing could be more comic, if that is all, than the position of Prussians in Alsace:  which they declare to be purely German and admit to be furiously French; so that they have to terrorise it by sabring anybody, including cripples.  Again, any of us can see why an officer need not, should not, had better not, and generally does not, sabre a cripple.  But an officer can sabre a cripple; and a Prussian officer will go on doing it until you take away the sabre.  It is this insane and rigid realism that makes their case peculiar:  like that of a Chinaman copying something, or a half-witted servant taking a message.  If they had the power to put black and white posts round the grave of Virgil, or dig up Dante to see if he had yellow hair, the mere doing of it which for some of us would be the most unlikely, would for them be the least unlikely thing.  They do not hear the laughter of the ages.  If they had the power to treat the English or Italian Premier quite literally as a traitor, and shoot him against a wall, they are quite capable of turning such hysterical rhetoric into reality:  and scattering his brains before they had collected their own.  They do not feel atmospheres.  They are all a little deaf; as they are all a little short-sighted.  They are annoyed when their enemies, after such experiences as those of Belgium, accuse them of breaking their promises.  And in one sense they are right; for there are some sorts of promises they probably would keep.  If they have promised to respect a free country, or an old friend, to observe a sworn partnership, or to spare a harmless population, they will find such restrictions chilling and irksome.  They will ask some professor on what principle they are discarding it.  But if they have promised to shoot the cross off a church spire, or empty the inkpot into somebody’s beer, or bring home somebody’s ears in their pocket for the pleasure of their families, I think in these cases they would feel a sort of a shadow of what civilised men feel in the fulfilment of a promise, as distinct from the making of it.  And, in consideration of such cases, I cannot go the whole length of those severe critics who say that a Prussian will never keep his promise.