England and the War | Page 2

lesson.
We shall never understand the Germans. Some of their traits may
possibly be explained by their history. Their passionate devotion to the
State, their amazing vulgarity, their worship of mechanism and
mechanical efficiency, are explicable in a people who are not strong in
individual character, who have suffered much to achieve union, and
who have achieved it by subordinating themselves, soul and body, to a
brutal taskmaster. But the convulsions of war have thrown up things
that are deeper than these, primaeval things, which, until recently,
civilization was believed to have destroyed. The old monstrous gods
who gave their names to the days of the week are alive again in
Germany. The English soldier of to-day goes into action with the cold
courage of a man who is prepared to make the best of a bad job. The
German soldier sacrifices himself, in a frenzy of religious exaltation, to
the War-God. The filthiness that the Germans use, their deliberate
befouling of all that is elegant and gracious and antique, their spitting
into the food that is to be eaten by their prisoners, their defiling with
ordure the sacred vessels in the churches--all these things, too
numerous and too monotonous to describe, are not the instinctive
coarsenesses of the brute beast; they are a solemn ritual of filth,
religiously practised, by officers no less than by men. The waves of
emotional exaltation which from time to time pass over the whole
people have the same character, the character of savage religion.

If they are alien to civilization when they fight, they are doubly alien
when they reason. They are glib and fluent in the use of the terms
which have been devised for the needs of thought and argument, but
their use of these terms is empty, and exhibits all the intellectual
processes with the intelligence left out. I know nothing more
distressing than the attempt to follow any German argument concerning
the War. If it were merely wrong-headed, cunning, deceitful, there
might still be some compensation in its cleverness. There is no such
compensation. The statements made are not false, but empty; the
arguments used are not bad, but meaningless. It is as if they despised
language, and made use of it only because they believe that it is an
instrument of deceit. But a man who has no respect for language cannot
possibly use it in such a manner as to deceive others, especially if those
others are accustomed to handle it delicately and powerfully. It ought
surely to be easy to apologize for a war that commands the
whole-hearted support of a nation; but no apology worthy of the name
has been produced in Germany. The pleadings which have been used
are servile things, written to order, and directed to some particular
address, as if the truth were of no importance. No one of these appeals
has produced any appreciable effect on the minds of educated
Frenchmen, or Englishmen, or Americans, even among those who are
eager to hear all that the enemy has to say for himself. This is a strange
thing; and is perhaps the widest breach of all. We are hopelessly
separated from the Germans; we have lost the use of a common
language, and cannot talk with them if we would.
We cannot understand them; is it remotely possible that they will ever
understand us? Here, too, the difficulties seem insuperable. It is true
that in the past they have shown themselves willing to study us and to
imitate us. But unless they change their minds and their habits, it is not
easy to see how they are to get near enough to us to carry on their study.
While they remain what they are we do not want them in our
neighbourhood. We are not fighting to anglicize Germany, or to impose
ourselves on the Germans; our work is being done, as work is so often
done in this idle sport-loving country, with a view to a holiday. We
wish to forget the Germans; and when once we have policed them into
quiet and decency we shall have earned the right to forget them, at least

for a time. The time of our respite perhaps will not be long. If the Allies
defeat them, as the Allies will, it seems as certain as any uncertain
thing can be that a mania for imitating British and American
civilization will take possession of Germany. We are not vindictive to a
beaten enemy, and when the Germans offer themselves as pupils we are
not likely to be either enthusiastic in our welcome or obstinate in our
refusal. We shall be bored but concessive. I confess that there are some
things in the prospect of this imitation which haunt me like a nightmare.
The British soldier, whom the