In sharp contrast with this handsomeness of spirit is the iciness of her purpose as regards the Boche.  I heard no hatred of the individual German—­only the deep conviction that Prussianism must be crushed at all costs.  The American does not speak of “Poor old Fritz” as we do on our British Front.  He’s too logical to be sorry for his enemy.  His attitude is too sternly impersonal for him to be moved by any emotions, whether of detestation or charity, as regards the Hun.  All he knows is that a Frankenstein machinery has been set in motion for the destruction of the world; to counteract it he is creating another piece of machinery.  He has set about his job in just the same spirit that he set about overcoming the difficulties of the Panama Canal.  He has been used to overcoming the obstinacies of Nature; the human obstinacies of his new task intrigue him.  I believe that, just as in peace times big business was his romance and the wealth which he gained from it was often incidental, so in France the job as a job impels him, quite apart from its heroic object.  After all, smashing the Pan-Germanic Combine is only another form of trust-busting—­trust-busting with aeroplanes and guns instead of with law and ledgers.

There is something almost terrifying to me about this quiet collectedness—­this Pierpont Morgan touch of sphinxlike aloofness from either malice or mercy.  Just as America once said, “Business is business” and formed her world-combines, collaring monopolies and allowing the individual to survive only by virtue of belonging to the fittest, so now she is saying, “War is war”—­something to be accomplished with as little regard to landscapes as blasting a railroad across a continent.

For the first time in the history of this war Germany is “up against” a nation which is going to fight her in her own spirit, borrowing her own methods.  This statement needs explaining; its truth was first brought to my attention at American General Headquarters.  The French attitude towards the war is utterly personal; it is bayonet to bayonet.  It depends on the unflinching courage of every individual French man and woman.  The English attitude is that of the knight-errant, seeking high adventures and welcoming death in a noble cause.  But the German attitude disregards the individual and knows nothing of gallantry.  It lacks utterly the spiritual elation which made the strength of the French at Verdun and of the English at Mons. The German attitude is that of a soulless organisation, invented for one purpose—­profitable conquest.  War for the Hun is not a final and dreaded atonement for the restoring of justice to the world; it is a business undertaking which, as he is fond of telling us, has never failed to yield him good interest on his capital.  I have seen a good deal of the capital he has invested in the battlefields he has lost—­men smashed to pulp, bruised by shells out of resemblance to anything human, the breeding place of flies and pestilence, no longer the homes of loyalties and affections.  I cannot conceive what percentage of returns can be said to compensate for the agony expended on such indecent Golgothas.  However, the Hun has assured us that it pays him; he flatters himself that he is a first-class business man.