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THE APPETITE OF 
 TYRANNY 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 The Defendant 
 
 Varie:"* Types 
 
 Charles Dickens. A Critical Study 
 
 The Man Who Was Thursday 
 
 Tremendous Trifles 
 
 What's Wrong with the World 
 
 Alarms and Discursions 
 
 A Miscellany of Men 
 
 The Defence of Nonsense, and 
 Other Essays 
 
 Wit and Wisdom of G. K. Chester- 
 ton, Selected and Arranged 
 BY His Wife 
 
 The Appetite op Tyranny, In- 
 cluding Letters to an Old 
 Garibaldian 
 
THE APPETITE 
 OF TYRANNY 
 
 Including Letters to an 
 Old Garibaldian 
 
 By 
 G. K. CHESTERTON 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 
 
 1915 
 
J 
 
 ^?3 
 
 Copyright, 1915, by 
 DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 
 
 MAR il 1915 
 
 ni.A397057 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 The Facts of the Case 
 I The War on the Word 
 II The Refusal of Reciprocity 
 III The Appetite of Tyranny . 
 IV The Escape of Folly . 
 
 Letters to an Old Garibaldian 
 
 PAGE 
 
 1 
 15 
 
 ai 
 
 50 
 66 
 
 80 
 
THE FACTS OF THE CASE 
 
 Unless we are all mad, there is at the back 
 of the most bewildering business a story: 
 and if we are all mad, there is no such thing 
 as madness. If I set a house on fire, it is 
 quite true that I may illuminate many other 
 people's weaknesses as well as my own. It 
 may be that the master of the house was 
 burned because he was drunk; it may be that 
 the mistress of the house was burned because 
 she was stingy, and perished arguing about 
 the expense of the fire-escape. It is, never- 
 theless, broadly true that they both were 
 burned because I set fire to their house. 
 That is the story of the thing. The. mere 
 facts of the story about the present European 
 conflagration are quite as easy to tell. 
 
 Before we go on to the deeper things which 
 make this war the most sincere war of human 
 
2 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 history, it is easy to answer the question of 
 why England came to be in it at all, as one 
 asks how a man fell down a coal-hole, or 
 failed to keep an appointment. Facts are 
 not the w^hole truth. But facts are facts, 
 and in this case the facts are few and simple. 
 Prussia, France, and England had all prom- 
 ised not to invade Belgium. Prussia pro- 
 posed to invade Belgium, because it was the 
 safest way of invading France. But Prus- 
 sia promised that if she might break in, 
 through her own broken promise and ours, 
 she would break in and not steal. In other 
 words, we were offered at the same instant a 
 promise of faith in the future and a proposal 
 of perjury in the present. Those interested 
 in human origin may refer to an old Vic- 
 torian writer of English, who, in the last and 
 most restrained of his historical essays, wrote 
 of Frederick the Great, the founder of this 
 unchanging Prussian policy. After describ- 
 
THE FACTS OF THE CASE 3 
 
 ing how Frederick broke the guarantee he had 
 signed on behalf of Maria Theresa, he then 
 describes how Frederick sought to put things 
 straight by a promise that was an insult. "If 
 she would but let him have Silesia, he would, 
 he said, stand by her against any power 
 which should try to deprive her of her other 
 dominions, as if he was not already bound to 
 stand by her, or as if his new promise could 
 be of more value than the old one." That 
 passage was written by Macaulay, but so far 
 as the mere contemporary facts are con- 
 cerned, it might have been written by me. 
 
 Upon the immediate logical and legal ori- 
 gin of the English interest there can be no 
 rational debate. There are some things so 
 simple that one can almost prove them with 
 plans and diagrams, as in Euclid. One 
 could make a kind of comic calendar of what 
 would have happened to the English diplo- 
 matist if he had been silenced every time by 
 
4 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 Prussian diplomacy. Suppose we arrange it 
 in the form of a kind of diary. 
 
 July 24. Germany invades Belgium. 
 
 July 25. England declares war. 
 
 July 26. Germany promises not to an- 
 nex Belgium. 
 
 July 27. England withdraws from the 
 war. 
 
 July 28. Germany annexes Belgium. 
 England declares war. 
 
 July 29. Germany promises not to an- 
 nex France. England withdraws from the 
 war. 
 
 July 30. Germany annexes France. 
 England declares war. 
 
 July 31. Germany promises not to an- 
 nex England. 
 
 Aug. 1. England withdraws from the 
 war. Germany invades England . . . 
 
 How long is anybody expected to go with 
 that sort of game, or keep peace at that 
 
THE FACTS OF THE CASE 5 
 
 illimitable price? How long must we pur- 
 sue a road in which promises are all fetishes 
 in front of us and all fragments behind us? 
 No : upon the cold facts of the final negotia- 
 tions, as told by any of the diplomatists 
 in any of the documents, there is no doubt 
 about the story. And no doubt about the 
 villain of the story. 
 
 These are the last facts — the facts which 
 involved England. It is equally easy to 
 state the first facts — the facts which involved 
 Europe. The Prince who practically ruled 
 Austria was shot by certain persons whom the 
 Austrian Government believed to be con- 
 spirators from Servia. The Austrian Gov- 
 ernment piled up arms and armies, but said 
 not a word either to Servia their suspect or 
 Italy their ally. From the documents it 
 would seem that Austria kept everybody in 
 the dark, except Prussia. It is probably 
 nearer the truth to say that Prussia kept 
 
6 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 everybody in tJie dark, including Austria. 
 But all that is what is called opinion, belief, 
 conviction or common-sense, and we are not 
 dealing with it here. The objective fact is 
 that Austria told Servia to permit Servian 
 officers to be suspended by the authority of 
 Austrian officers, and told Servia to submit 
 to this within forty-eight hours. In other 
 words, the sovereign of Servia was practically 
 told to take off not only the laurels of two 
 great campaigns but his own lawful and na- 
 tional crown, and to do it in a time in which 
 no respectable citizen is expected to discharge 
 an hotel bill. Servia asked for time, for ar- 
 bitration — in short, for peace. But Prussia 
 had already begun to mobilise; and Prussia, 
 presuming that Servia might thus be rescued, 
 declared war. 
 
 Between these two ends of fact, the ulti- 
 matum to Servia, the ultimatum to Belgium, 
 any one so inclined can of course talk as if 
 
THE FACTS OF THE CASE 7 
 
 everything were relative. If any one ask 
 why the Czar should rush to the support of 
 Servia, it is as easy to ask why the Kaiser 
 should rush to the support of Austria. If 
 any one say that the French would attack the 
 Germans, it is sufficient to answer that the 
 Germans did attack the French. There re- 
 main, however, two attitudes to consider, 
 even perhaps two arguments to counter, 
 which can best be considered and countered 
 under this general head of facts. First of 
 all, there is a curious, cloudy sort of argu^ 
 ment, much affected by the professional rhet- 
 oricians of Prussia, who are sent out to in- 
 struct and correct the minds of Americans or 
 Scandinavians. It consists of going into 
 convulsions of incredulity and scorn at the 
 mention of Russia's responsibility for Servia 
 or England's responsibility for Belgium; and 
 suggesting that, treaty or no treaty, frontier 
 or no frontier, Russia would be out to slay 
 
8 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 Teutons or England to steal colonies. Here, 
 as elsewhere, I think the professors dotted all 
 over the Baltic plain fail in lucidity, and in 
 the power of distinguishing ideas. Of course 
 it is quite true that England has material in- 
 terests to defend, and will probably use the 
 opportunity to defend them: or, in other 
 words, of course England, like everybody 
 else, would be more comfortable if Prussia 
 were less predominant. The fact remains 
 that we did not do what the Germans did. 
 We did not invade Holland to seize a naval 
 and commercial advantage: and whether 
 they say that we wished to do it in our greed, 
 or feared to do it in our cowardice, the fact 
 remains that we did not do it. Unless this 
 common-sense principle be kept in view, I 
 cannot conceive how any quarrel can possibly 
 be judged. A contract may be made be- 
 tween two persons solely for material advan- 
 tage on each side : but the moral advantage is 
 
THE FACTS OF THE CASE 9 
 
 still generally supposed to lie with the person 
 who keeps the contract. Surely it cannot be 
 dishonest to be honest — even if honesty is 
 the best policy. Imagine the most complex 
 maze of indirect motives; and still the man 
 who keeps faith for money cannot possibly 
 be worse than the man who breaks faith for 
 money. It will be noted that this ultimate 
 test applies in the same way to Servia as to 
 Belgium and Britain. The Servians may not 
 be a very peaceful people; but, on the oc- 
 casion under discussion, it was certainly they 
 who wanted peace. You may choose to 
 think the Serb a sort of bom robber : but on 
 this occasion it was certainly the Austrian 
 who was trying to rob. Similarly, you may 
 call England perfidious as a sort of historical 
 summary; and declare your private belief 
 that Mr. Asquith was vowed from infancy to 
 the ruin of the German Empire, a Hannibal 
 and hater of the eagles. But, when all is 
 
10 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 said, It is nonsense to call a man perfidious 
 because he keeps his promise. It is absurd 
 to complain of the sudden treachery of a 
 business man in turning up punctually to 
 his appointment: or the unfair shock given 
 to a creditor by the debtor paying his debts. 
 Lastly, there is an attitude not unknown 
 in the crisis against which I should particu- 
 larly like to protest. I should address my 
 protest especially to those lovers and pur- 
 suers of Peace who, ver}^ short-sightedly, 
 have occasionally adopted it. I mean the 
 attitude which is impatient of these prelimi- 
 nary details about who did this or that, and 
 whether it was right or wrong. They are 
 satisfied with saying that an enormous calam- 
 ity, called War, has been begun by some or 
 all of us ; and should be ended by some or all 
 of us. To these people this preliminary 
 chapter about the precise happenings must 
 appear not only dry (and it must of neces- 
 
THE FACTS OF THE CASE ii 
 
 sity be the driest part of the task) but essen- 
 tially needless and barren. I wish to tell 
 these people that they are wrong; that they 
 are wrong upon all principles of human jus- 
 tice and historic continuity: but that they 
 are specially and supremely wrong upon their 
 own principles of arbitration and interna- 
 tional peace. 
 
 These sincere and high-minded peace-lov- 
 ers are always telling us that citizens no 
 longer settle their quarrels by private vio- 
 lence ; and that nations should no longer set- 
 tle theirs by public violence. They are al- 
 ways telling us that we no longer fight duels ; 
 and need no longer wage wars. In short, 
 they perpetually base their peace proposals 
 on the fact that an ordinary citizen no longer 
 avenges himself with an axe. But how is 
 he prevented from revenging himself with an 
 axe*? If he hits his neighbour on the head 
 with the kitchen chopper, what do we do^ 
 
12 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 Do we all join hands, like children playing 
 Mulberry Bush, and say "We are all respon- 
 sible for this; but let us hope it will not 
 spread. Let us hope for the happy day 
 when he shall leave off chopping at the man's 
 head; and when nobody shall ever chop any- 
 thing for ever and ever." Do we say "Let 
 byegones be byegones; why go back to all 
 the dull details with which the business be- 
 gan; who can tell with what sinister motives 
 the man was standing there within reach of 
 the hatchet'?" We do not. We keep the 
 peace in private life by asking for the facts 
 of provocation, and the proper object of pun- 
 ishment. We do go into the dull details; 
 we do enquire into the origins; we do em- 
 phatically enquire who it was that hit first. 
 In short we do what I have done very briefly 
 in this place. 
 
 Given this, it is indeed true that behind 
 these facts there are truths; truths of a ter- 
 
THE FACTS OF THE CASE 13 
 
 rible, of a spiritual sort. In mere fact, the 
 Germanic power has been wrong about Ser- 
 via, wrong about Russia, wrong about Bel- 
 gium, wrong about England, wrong about 
 Italy. But there was a reason for its being 
 wrong everywhere; and of that root reason, 
 which has moved half the world against it, 
 I shall speak later. For that is something 
 too omnipresent to be proved, too indispu- 
 table to be helped by detail. It is nothing 
 less than the locating, after more than a hun- 
 dred years of recriminations and wrong ex- 
 planations, of the modern European evil : the 
 finding of the fountain from which poison 
 has flowed upon all the nations of the earth. 
 
I 
 
 THE WAR ON THE WORD 
 
 It will hardly be denied that there is one 
 lingering doubt in many, who recognise un- 
 avoidable self-defence in the instant parry of 
 the English sword, and who have no great 
 love for the sweeping sabre of Sadowa and 
 Sedan. That doubt is the doubt whether 
 Russia, as compared with Prussia, is suffi- 
 ciently decent and democratic to be the ally 
 of liberal and civilised powers. I take first, 
 therefore, this matter of civilisation. 
 
 It is vital in a discussion like this, that we 
 should make sure we are going by meanings 
 and not by mere words. It is not necessary 
 in any argument to settle what a word means 
 or ought to mean. But it is necessary in 
 every argument to settle what we propose to 
 mean by the word. So long as our opponent 
 understands what is the thing of which we 
 
 IS 
 
i6 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 are talking, it does not matter to the argu- 
 ment whether the word is or is not the one he 
 would have chosen. A soldier does not say 
 "We were ordered to go to Mechlin; but I 
 would rather go to Malines." He may dis- 
 cuss the etymology and archaeology of the 
 difference on the march; but the point is 
 that he knows where to go. So long as we 
 know what a given word is to mean in a 
 given discussion, it does not even matter if it 
 means something else in some other and quite 
 distinct discussion. We have a perfect right 
 to say that the width of a window comes to 
 four feet; even if we instantly and cheerfully 
 change the subject to the larger mammals; 
 and say that an elephant has four feet. The 
 identity of the words does not matter, be- 
 cause there is no doubt at all about the mean- 
 ings; because nobody is likely to think of an 
 elephant as four foot long, or of a window as 
 having tusks and a curly trunk. 
 
THE WAR ON THE WORD 17 
 
 It is essential* to emphasise this conscious- 
 ness of the tiling under discussion in connec- 
 tion with two or three words that are, as 
 it were, the key-words of this war. One of 
 them is the word "barbarian." The Prus- 
 sians apply it to the Russians: the Russians 
 apply it to the Prussians. Both, I think, 
 really mean something that really exists, 
 name or no name. Both mean different 
 things. And if we ask what these different 
 things are, we shall understand why Eng- 
 land and France prefer Russia; and consider 
 Prussia the really dangerous barbarian of the 
 two. To begin with, it goes so much deeper 
 even than atrocities; of which, in the past 
 at least, all the three Empires of Central 
 Europe have partaken pretty equally, as they 
 partook of Poland. An English writer, seek- 
 ing to avert the war by warnings against 
 Russian influence, said that the flogged backs 
 of Polish women stood between us and the 
 
i8 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 Alliance. But not long before, the flogging 
 of women by an Austrian general led to that 
 officer being thrashed in the streets of Lon- 
 don by Barclay and Perkins' draymen. 
 And as for the third power, the Prussians, 
 it seems clear that they have treated Belgian 
 women in a style compared with which flog- 
 ging might be called an official formality. 
 But, as I say, something much deeper than 
 any such recrimination lies behind the use 
 of the word on either side. When the Ger- 
 man Emperor complains of our allying our- 
 selves with a barbaric and half-oriental 
 power he is not (I assure you) shedding 
 tears over the grave of Kosciusko. And 
 when I say (as I do most heartily) that the 
 German Emperor is a barbarian, I am not 
 merely expressing any prejudices I may have 
 against the profanation of churches or of 
 children. My countrymen and I mean a 
 certain and intelligible thing when we call 
 
THE WAR ON THE WORD 19 
 
 the Prussians barbarians. It is quite differ- 
 ent from the thing attributed to Russians; 
 and it could not possibly be attributed to 
 Russians. It is very important that the 
 neutral world should understand what this 
 thing is. 
 
 If the German calls the Russian barbarous 
 he presumably means imperfectly civilised. 
 There is a certain path along which Western 
 nations have proceeded in recent times; and 
 it is tenable that Russia has not proceeded so 
 far as the others: that she has less of the 
 special modern system in science, commerce, 
 machinery, travel or political constitution. 
 The Russ ploughs with an old plough; he 
 wears a wild beard; he adores relics; his life 
 is as rude and hard as that of a subject of 
 Alfred the Great. Therefore he is, in the 
 German sense, a barbarian. Poor fellows 
 like Gorky and Dostoieffsky have to form 
 their own reflections on the scenery, without 
 
20 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 the assistance of large quotations from Schil- 
 ler on garden seats; or inscriptions directing 
 them to pause and thank the All-Father for 
 the finest view in Flesse-Pumpernickel. The 
 Russians, having nothing but their faith, 
 their fields, their great courage, and their 
 self-governing communes, are quite cut off 
 from what is called (in the fashionable street 
 in Frankfort) The True, The Beautiful and 
 The Good. There is a real sense in which 
 one can call such backwardness barbaric; by 
 comparison with the Kaiserstrasse ; and in 
 that sense it is true of Russia. 
 
 Now we, the French and English, do not 
 mean this when we call the Prussians bar- 
 barians. If their cities soared higher than 
 their flying ships, if their trains travelled 
 faster than their bullets, we should still call 
 them barbarians. We should know exactly 
 what we meant by it; and we should know 
 that it is true. For we do not mean any- 
 
THE WAR ON THE WORD 21 
 
 thing that is an imperfect civilisation by ac- 
 cident. We mean something that is the 
 enemy of civilisation by design. We mean 
 something that is wilfully at war with the 
 principles by which human society has been 
 made possible hitherto. Of course it must 
 be partly civilised even to destroy civilisa- 
 tion. Such ruin could not be wrought by 
 the savages that are merely undeveloped or 
 inert. You could not have even Huns with- 
 out horses; or horses without horsemanship. 
 You could not have even Danish pirates with- 
 out ships, or ships without seamanship. 
 This person, whom I may call the Positive 
 Barbarian, must be rather more superficially 
 up-to-date than what I may call the Nega- 
 tive Barbarian. Alaric was an officer in the 
 Roman legions : but for all that he destroyed 
 Rome. Nobody supposes that Eskimos 
 could have done it at all neatly. But (in 
 our meaning) barbarism is not a matter of 
 
22 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 methods but of aims. We say that these 
 veneered vandals have the perfectly serious 
 aim of destroying certain ideas which, as 
 they think, the world has outgrown; without 
 which, as we think, the world will die. 
 
 It is essential that this perilous peculiarity 
 in the Pruss, or Positive Barbarian, should be 
 seized. He has what he fancies is a new 
 idea; and he is going to apply it to every- 
 body. As a fact it is simply a false general- 
 isation; but he is really trying to make it 
 general. This does not apply to the Nega- 
 tive Barbarian : it does not apply to the Rus- 
 sian or the Servian, even if they are bar- 
 barians. If a Russian peasant does beat his 
 wife, he does it because his fathers did it 
 before him: he is likely to beat less rather 
 than more as the past fades away. He does 
 not think, as the Prussian would, that he has 
 made a new discovery in physiology in find- 
 ing that a woman is weaker than a man. 
 
THE WAR ON THE WORD 23 
 
 If a Servian does knife his rival without a 
 word, he does it because other Servians have 
 done it. He may regard it even as piety, but 
 certainly not as progress. He does not 
 think, as the Prussian does, that he founds 
 a new school of horology by starting be- 
 fore the word "Go." He does not think he 
 is in advance of the world in militarism, 
 merely because he is behind it in morals. 
 No; the danger of the Pruss is that he is 
 prepared to fight for old errors as if they were 
 new truths. He has somehow heard of cer- 
 tain shallow simplifications; and imagines 
 that we have never heard of them. And, 
 as I have said, his limited but very sincere 
 lunacy concentrates chiefly in a desire to de- 
 stroy two ideas, the twin root ideas of ra- 
 tional society. The first is the idea of record 
 and promise: the second is the idea of reci- 
 procity. 
 
 It is plain that the promise, or extension 
 
24 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 of responsibility through time, is what chiefly 
 distinguishes us, I will not say from savages, 
 but from brutes and reptiles. This was 
 noted by the shrewdness of the Old Testa- 
 ment, when it summed up the dark irrespon- 
 sible enormity of Leviathan in the words 
 "Will he make a pact with thee?" The 
 promise, like the wheel, is unknown in Na- 
 ture: and is the first mark of man. Refer- 
 ring only to human civilisation it may be 
 said with seriousness, that in the beginning 
 was the Word. The vow is to the man what 
 the song is to the bird, or the bark to the 
 dog; his voice, whereby he is known. Just 
 as a man who cannot keep an appointment 
 is not fit even to fight a duel, so the man who 
 cannot keep an appointment with himself is 
 not sane enough even for suicide. It is not 
 easy to mention anything on which the enor- 
 mous apparatus of human life can be said 
 to depend. But if it depends on anything, 
 
THE WAR ON THE WORD 25 
 
 it IS on this frail cord, flung from the for- 
 gotten hills of yesterday to the invisible 
 mountains of to-morrow. On that solitary 
 string han,gs everything from Armageddon to 
 an almanac, from a successful revolution to 
 a return ticket. On that solitary string the 
 Barbarian is hacking heavily, with a sabre 
 which is fortunately blunt. 
 
 Any one can see this well enough, merely 
 by reading the last negotiations between 
 London and Berlin. The Prussians had 
 made a new discoveiy in international poli- 
 tics : that it may often be convenient to make 
 a promise; and yet curiously inconvenient to 
 keep it. They were charmed, in their simple 
 way, with this scientific discovery, and de- 
 sired to communicate it to the world. They 
 therefore promised England a promise, on 
 condition that she broke a promise, and on 
 the implied condition that the new promise 
 might be broken as easily as the old one. To 
 
26 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 the profound astonishment of Prussia, this 
 reasonable offer was refused ! I believe that 
 the astonishment of Prussia was quite sin- 
 cere. That is what I mean when I say that 
 the Barbarian is trying to cut away that cord 
 of honesty and clear record, on which hangs 
 all that men have made. 
 
 The friends of the German cause have 
 complained that Asiatics and Africans upon 
 the very verge of savagery have been brought 
 against them from India and Algiers. And, 
 in ordinary circumstances, I should sympa- 
 thise with such a complaint made by a 
 European people. But the circumstances are 
 not ordinary. Here, again, the quite unique 
 barbarism of Prussia goes deeper than what 
 we call barbarities. About mere barbarities, 
 it is true, the Turco and the Sikh would have 
 a very good reply to the superior Teuton. 
 The general and just reason for not using 
 non-European tribes against Europeans is 
 
THE WAR ON THE WORD 27 
 
 that given by Chatham against the use of 
 the Red Indian: that such allies might do 
 very diabolical things. But the poor Turco 
 might not unreasonably ask, after a week- 
 end in Belgium, what more diabolical things 
 he could do than the highly cultured Ger- 
 mans were doing themselves. Nevertheless, 
 as I say, the justification of any extra-Eu- 
 ropean aid goes deeper than any such details. 
 It rests upon the fact that even other civilisa- 
 tions, even much lower civilisations, even re- 
 mote and repulsive civilisations, depend as 
 much as our own on this primary principle 
 on which the super-morality of Potsdam de- 
 clares open War. Even savages promise 
 things; and respect those who keep their 
 promises. Even Orientals write things 
 down : and though they write them from right 
 to left, they know the importance of a scrap 
 of paper. Many merchants will tell you 
 that the word of the sinister and almost un- 
 
28 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 human Chinaman is often as good as his 
 bond : and it was amid palm trees and Syrian 
 pavilions that the great utterance opened the 
 tabernacle, to him that sweareth to his hurt 
 and changeth not. There is doubtless a 
 dense labyrinth of duplicity in the East, and 
 perhaps more guile in the individual Asiatic 
 than in the individual German. But we are 
 not talking of the violations of human mo- 
 rality in various parts of the world. We are 
 talking about a new and inhuman morality, 
 which denies altogether the day of obligation. 
 The Prussians have been told by their liter- 
 ary men that everything depends upon 
 Mood: and by their politicians that all ar- 
 rangements dissolve before "necessity." 
 That is the importance of the German Chan- 
 cellor's phrase. He did not allege some 
 special excuse in the case of Belgium, which 
 might make it seem an exception that proved 
 the rule. He distinctly argued, as on a prin- 
 
THE WAR ON THE WORD 29 
 
 ciple applicable to other cases, that victory- 
 was a necessity and honour was a scrap of 
 paper. And it is evident that the half-edu- 
 cated Prussian imagination really cannot get 
 any further than this. It cannot see that if 
 everybody's action were entirely incalculable 
 from hour to hour, it would not only be the 
 end of all promises, but the end of all proj- 
 ects. In not being able to see that, the Ber- 
 lin philosopher is really on a lower mental 
 level than the Arab who respects the salt, or 
 the Brahmin who preserves the caste. And 
 in this quarrel we have a right to come with 
 scimitars as well as sabres, with bows as well 
 as rifles, with assegai and tomahawk and 
 boomerang, because there is in all these at 
 least a seed of civilisation that these intel- 
 lectual anarchists would kill. And if they 
 should find us in our last stand girt with such 
 strange swords and following unfamiliar en- 
 signs, and ask us for what we fight in so 
 
30 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 singular a company, we shall know what to 
 reply: "We fight for the trust and for the 
 tryst; for fixed memories and the possible 
 meeting of men ; for all that makes life any- 
 thing but an uncontrollable nightmare. We 
 fight for the long arm of honour and remem- 
 brance ; for all that can lift a man above the 
 quicksands of his moods, and give him the 
 mastery of time," 
 
II 
 
 THE REFUSAL OF RECIPROCITY 
 
 In the last summary I suggested that Bar- 
 barism, as we mean it, is not mere ignorance 
 or even mere cruelty. It has a more precise 
 sense, and means militant hostility to certain 
 necessary human ideas. I took the case of 
 the vow or the contract, which Prussian in- 
 tellectualism would destroy. I urged that 
 the Prussian is a spiritual Barbarian, because 
 he is not bound by his own past, any more 
 than a man in a dream. He avows that 
 when he promised to respect a frontier on 
 Monday, he did not foresee what he calls 
 "the necessity" of not respecting it on Tues- 
 day. In short, he is like a child, who at the 
 end of all reasonable explanations and re- 
 minders of admitted arrangements, has no 
 answer except "But I want to." 
 
 31 
 
32 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 There is another idea in human arrange- 
 ments so fundamental as to be forgotten ; but 
 now for the first time denied. It may be 
 called the idea of reciprocity; or, in better 
 English, of give and take. The Prussian 
 appears to be quite intellectually incapable 
 of this thought. He cannot, I think, con- 
 ceive the idea that is the foundation of all 
 comedy; that, in the eyes of the other man, 
 he is only the other man. And if we carry 
 this clue through the institutions of Prussian- 
 ised Germany, we shall find how curiously 
 his mind has been limited in the matter. 
 The German differs from other patriots in 
 the inability to understand patriotism. Other 
 European peoples pity the Poles or the Welsh 
 for their violated borders; but Germans pity 
 only themselves. They might take forcible 
 possession of the Severn or the Danube, of 
 the Thames or the Tiber, of the Garry or the 
 Garonne — and they would still be singing 
 
THE REFUSAL OF RECIPROCITY 33 
 
 sadly about how fast and true stands the 
 watch on Rhine; and what a shame it would 
 be if any one took their own little river away 
 from them. That is what I mean by not be- 
 ing reciprocal: and you will find it in all 
 that they do: as in all that is done by sav- 
 ages. 
 
 Here, again, it is very necessary to avoid 
 confusing this soul of the savage with mere 
 savagery in the sense of brutality or butch- 
 ery; in which the Greeks, the French and all 
 the most civilised nations have indulged in 
 hours of abnormal panic or revenge. Ac- 
 cusations of cruelty are generally mutual. 
 But it is the point about the Prussian that 
 with him nothing is mutual. The defini- 
 tion of the true savage does not concern it- 
 self even with how much more he hurts 
 strangers or captives than do the other tribes 
 of men. The definition of the true savage is 
 that he laughs when he hurts you ; and howls 
 
34 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 when you hurt him. This extraordinan- in- 
 equality in the mind is in every act and word 
 that comes from Berlin. For instance, no 
 man of the world believes all he sees in the 
 newspapers; and no journalist believes a 
 quarter of it. We should, therefore, be 
 quite ready in the ordinary way to take a 
 great deal off the tales of German atrocities; 
 to doubt this story or deny that. But there 
 is one thing that we cannot doubt or deny: 
 the seal and authority of the Emperor. In 
 the Imperial proclamation the fact that cer- 
 tain "frightful" things have been done is 
 admitted; and justified on the ground of 
 their frightfulness. It was a military ne- 
 cessity to terrify the peaceful populations 
 with something that was not civilised, some- 
 thing that was hardly human. Very well. 
 That is an intelligible policy: and in that 
 sense an intelligible argument. An army en- 
 dangered by foreigners may do the most 
 
THE REFUSAL OF RECIPROCITY 35 
 
 frightful things. But then we turn the next 
 page of the Kaiser's public diary, and we 
 find him writing to the President of the 
 United States, to complain that the English 
 are using Dum-dum bullets and violating 
 various regulations of the Hague Conference. 
 I pass for the present the question of whether 
 there is a word of truth in these charges. I 
 am content to gaze rapturously at the blink- 
 ing eyes of the True, or Positive, Barbarian. 
 I suppose he would be quite puzzled if we 
 said that violating the Hague Conference 
 was "a military necessity" to us; or that the 
 rules of the Conference were only a scrap of 
 paper. He would be quite pained if we said 
 that Dum-dum bullets, "by their very fright- 
 fulness," would be very useful to keep con- 
 quered Germans in order. Do what he will, 
 he cannot get outside the idea that he, be- 
 cause he is he and not you, is free to break 
 the law; and also to appeal to the law. It 
 
36 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 is said that the Prussian officers play at a 
 game called Kriegsspiel, or the War Game. 
 But in truth they could not play at any game ; 
 for the essence of every game is that the rules 
 are the same on both sides. 
 
 But taking every German institution in 
 turn, the case is the same; and it is not a 
 case of mere bloodshed or military bravado. 
 The duel, for example, can legitimately be 
 called a barbaric thing; but the word is here 
 used in another sense. There are duels in 
 Germany; but so there are in France, Italy, 
 Belgium, and Spain; indeed, there are duels 
 wherever there are dentists, newspapers, 
 Turkish baths, time-tables, and all the curses 
 of civilisation; except in England and a cor- 
 ner of America. You may happen to regard 
 the duel as a historic relic of the more bar- 
 baric States on which these modern States' 
 were built. It might equally well be main- 
 tained that the duel is everywhere the sign 
 
THE REFUSAL OF RECIPROCITY 37 
 
 of high civilisation; being the sign of its more 
 delicate sense of honour, its more vulnerable 
 vanity, or its greater dread of social dis- 
 repute. But whichever of the two views 
 you take, you must concede that the essence 
 of the duel is an armed equality. I should 
 not, therefore, apply the word barbaric, as 
 I am using it, to the duels of German officers, 
 or even to the broadsword combats that are 
 conventional among the German students. I 
 do not see why a young Prussian should not 
 have scars all over his face if he likes them; 
 nay, they are often the redeeming points of 
 interest on an otherwise somewhat unenlight- 
 ening countenance. The duel may be de- 
 fended; the sham duel may be defended. 
 
 What cannot be defended is something 
 really peculiar to Prussia, of which we hear 
 numberless stories, some of them certainly 
 true. It might be called the one-sided duel. 
 I mean the idea that there is some sort of dig- 
 
38 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 nity in drawing the sword upon a man who 
 has not got a sword; a waiter, or a shop as- 
 sistant, or even a schoolboy. One of the 
 officers of the Kaiser in the affair at Sa- 
 berne was found industriously hacking at a 
 cripple. In all these matters I would avoid 
 sentiment. We must not lose our tempers 
 at the mere cruelty of the thing; but pursue 
 the strict psychological distinction. Others 
 besides German soldiers have slain the de- 
 fenceless, for loot or lust or private malice, 
 like any other murderer. The point is that 
 nowhere else but in Prussian Germany is any 
 theory of honour mixed up with such things ; 
 any more than with poisoning or picking 
 pockets. No French, English, Italian or 
 American gentleman would think he had in 
 some way cleared his own character by stick- 
 ing his sabre through some ridiculous green- 
 grocer who had nothing in his hand but a 
 cucumber. It would seem as if the word 
 
THE REFUSAL OF RECIPROCITY 39 
 
 which is translated from the German as 
 "honour" must really mean something quite 
 different in German. It seems to mean 
 something more like what we should call 
 "prestige." 
 
 The fundamental fact, however, is the ab- 
 sence of the reciprocal idea. The Prussian 
 is not sufficiently civilised for the duel. 
 Even when he crosses swords with us his 
 thoughts are not as our thoughts; when we 
 both glorify war, we are glorifying different 
 things. Our medals are wrought like his, 
 but they do not mean the same thing; our 
 regiments are cheered as his are, but the 
 thought in the heart is not the same; the 
 Iron Cross is on the bosom of his king, but 
 it is not the sign of our God. For we, alas, 
 follow our God with many relapses and self- 
 contradictions, but he follows his very con- 
 sistently. Through all the things that we 
 have examined, the view of national bound- 
 
40 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 aries, the view of military methods, the 
 view of personal honour and self-defence, 
 there runs in their case something of an 
 atrocious simplicity; something too simple 
 for us to understand: the idea that glory 
 consists in holding the steel, and not in fac- 
 ing it. 
 
 If further examples were necessary, it 
 would be easy to give hundreds of them. 
 Let us leave, for the moment, the relation 
 between man and man in the thing called 
 the duel. Let us take the relation between 
 man and woman, in that immortal duel 
 which we call a marriage. Here again we 
 shall find that other Christian civilisations 
 aim at some kind of equality; even if the 
 balance be irrational or dangerous. Thus, 
 the two extremes of the treatment of women 
 might be represented by what are called the 
 respectable classes in America and in France. 
 In America they choose the risk of comrade- 
 
THE REFUSAL OF RECIPROCITY 41 
 
 ship ; in France the compensation of courtesy. 
 In America it is practically possible for any 
 young gentleman to take any young lady for 
 what he calls ( I deeply regret to say) a joy- 
 ride; but at least the man goes with the 
 woman as much as the woman with the man. 
 In France the young woman is protected like 
 a nun while she is unmarried; but when she 
 is a mother she is really a holy woman; and 
 when she is a grandmother she is a holy ter- 
 ror. By both extremes the woman gets 
 something back out of life. There is only 
 one place where she gets little or nothing 
 back; and that is the north of Germany. 
 France and America aim alike at equality; 
 America by similarity; France by dissimilar- 
 ity. But North Germany does definitely 
 aim at inequality. The woman stands up, 
 with no more irritation than a butler; the 
 man sits down, with no more embarrassment 
 than a guest. This is the cool affirmation 
 
42 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 of inferiority, as in the case of the sabre and 
 the tradesman. "Thou goest with women; 
 forget not thy whip," said Nietzsche. It 
 will be observed that he does not say 
 "poker"; which might come more naturally 
 to the mind of a more common or Christian 
 wife-beater. But then a poker is a part of 
 domesticity; and might be used by the wife 
 as well as the husband. In fact, it often is. 
 The sword and the whip are the weapons 
 of a privileged caste. 
 
 Pass from the closest of all differences, 
 that between husband and wife, to the most 
 distant of all differences, that of the remote 
 and unrelated races who have seldom seen 
 each other's faces, and never been tinged 
 with each other's blood. Here we still find 
 the same unvarying Prussian principle. 
 Any European might feel a genuine fear of 
 the Yellow Peril; and many Englishmen, 
 Frenchmen, and Russians have felt and ex- 
 
THE REFUSAL OF RECIPROCITY 43 
 
 pressed it. Many might say, and have said, 
 that the Heathen Chinee is very heathen in- 
 deed; that if he ever advances against us he 
 will trample and torture and utterly destroy, 
 in a way that Eastern people do, but West- 
 em people do not. Nor do I doubt the Ger- 
 man Emperor's sincerity when he sought to 
 point out to us how abnormal and abomi- 
 nable such a nightmare campaign would be, 
 supposing that it could ever come. But now 
 comes the comic irony; which never fails 
 to follow on the attempt of the Prussian to 
 be philosophic. For the Kaiser, after ex- 
 plaining to his troops how important it was 
 to avoid Eastern Barbarism, instantly com- 
 manded them to become Eastern Barbarians. 
 He told them, in so many words, to be Huns : 
 and leave nothing living or standing be- 
 hind them. In fact, he frankly offered a 
 new army corps of aboriginal Tartars to the 
 Far East, within such time as it may take a 
 
44 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 bewildered Hanoverian to turn into a Tar- 
 tar. Any one who has the painful habit of 
 personal thought, will perceive here at once 
 the non-reciprocal principle again. Boiled 
 down to its bones of logic, it means simply 
 this : "I am a German and you are a China- 
 man. Therefore I, being a German, have 
 a right to be a Chinaman. But you have no 
 right to be a Chinaman; because you are only 
 a Chinaman." This is probably the highest 
 point to which the German culture has 
 risen. 
 
 The principle here neglected, which may 
 be called Mutuality by those who misunder- 
 stand and dislike the word Equality, does 
 not offer so clear a distinction between the 
 Prussian and the other peoples as did the 
 first Prussian principle of an infinite and 
 destructive opportunism; or, in other words, 
 the principle of being unprincipled. Nor 
 upon this second can one take up so obvious 
 
THE REFUSAL OF RECIPROCITY 45 
 
 a position touching the other civilisations or 
 semi-civilisations of the world. Some idea 
 of oath and bond there is in the rudest tribes, 
 in the darkest continents. But it might be 
 maintained, of the more delicate and imagi- 
 native element of reciprocity, that a cannibal 
 in Borneo understands it almost as little as 
 a professor in Berlin. A narrow and one- 
 sided seriousness is the fault of barbarians 
 all over the world. This may have been the 
 meaning, for aught I know, of the one eye of 
 the Cyclops: that the Barbarian cannot see 
 round things or look at them from two points 
 of view; and thus becomes a blind beast and 
 an eater of men. Certainly there can be no 
 better summary of the savage than this, 
 which as we have seen, unfits him for the 
 duel. He is the man who cannot love — 
 no, nor even hate — his neighbour as himself. 
 But this quality in Prussia does have one 
 effect which has reference to the same ques- 
 
46 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 tion of the lower civilisations. It disposes 
 once and for all at least of the civilising 
 mission of Germany. Evidently the Ger- 
 mans are the last people in the world to be 
 trusted with the task. They are as short- 
 sighted morally as physically. What is 
 their sophism of "necessity" but an inability 
 to imagine to-niorrow morning^ What is 
 their non-reciprocity but an inability to im- 
 agine, not a god or devil, but merely another 
 man? Are these to judge mankind? Men 
 of two tribes in Africa not only know that 
 they are all men, but can understand that 
 they are all black men. In this they are 
 quite seriously in advance of the intellectual 
 Prussian; who cannot be got to see that we 
 are all white men. The ordinary eye is un- 
 able to perceive in the North-East Teuton 
 anything that marks him out especially 
 from the more colourless classes of the rest 
 of Aryan mankind. He is simply a white 
 
THE REFUSAL OF RECIPROCITY 47 
 
 man, with a tendency to the grey or the drab. 
 Yet he will explain, in serious official docu- 
 ments, that the difference between him and 
 us is a difference between "the master-race 
 and the inferior-race." The collapse of 
 German philosophy always occurs at the be- 
 ginning rather than the end of an argument; 
 and the difficulty here is that there is no way 
 of testing which is a master-race except by 
 asking which is your own race. If you can- 
 not find out (as is usually the case) you fall 
 back on the absurd occupation of writing 
 history about pre-historic times. But I 
 suggest quite seriously that if the Germans 
 can give their philosophy to the Hottentots, 
 there is no reason why they should not give 
 their sense of superiority to the Hottentots. 
 If they can see such fine shades between the 
 Goth and the Gaul, there is no reason why 
 similar shades should not lift the savage 
 above other savages; why any Ojibway 
 
48 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 should not discover that he is one tint redder 
 than the Dacotahs; or any nigger in the 
 Cameroons say he is not so black as he is 
 painted. For this principle of a quite un- 
 proved racial supremacy is the last and worst 
 of the refusals of reciprocity. The Prus- 
 sian calls all men to admire the beauty of his 
 large blue eyes. If they do, it is because 
 they have inferior eyes: if they don't, it is 
 because they have no eyes. 
 
 Wherever the most miserable remnant of 
 our race, astray and dried up in deserts, or 
 buried forever under the fall of bad civili- 
 sations, has some feeble memory that men 
 are men, that bargains are bargains, that 
 there are two sides to a question, or even 
 that it takes two to make a quarrel — that 
 remnant has the right to resist the New Cul- 
 ture, to the knife and club and the splintered 
 stone. For the Prussian begins all his cul- 
 ture by that act which is the destruction of 
 
THE REFUSAL OF RECIPROCITY 49 
 
 all creative thought and constructive action. 
 He breaks that mirror in the mind, in which 
 a man can see the face of his friend or foe. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 The German Emperor has reproached this 
 country with allying itself with "barbaric 
 and semi-oriental power." We have already 
 considered in what sense we use the word 
 barbaric : it is in the sense of one who is hos- 
 tile to civilisation, not one who is insufficient 
 in it. But when we pass from the idea of 
 the barbaric to the idea of the oriental, the 
 case is even more curious. There is nothing 
 particularly Tartar in Russian affairs, ex- 
 cept the fact that Russia expelled the Tar- 
 tars. The Eastern invader occupied and 
 crushed the country for many years ; but that 
 is equally true of Greece, of Spain and even 
 of Austria. If Russia has suffered from the 
 East she has suffered in order to resist it: 
 and it is rather hard that the very miracle 
 
 50 
 
THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 51 
 
 of her escape should make a mystery about 
 her origin. Jonah may or may not have 
 been three days inside a fish, but that does 
 not make him a merman. And in all the 
 other cases of European nations who escaped 
 the monstrous captivity, we do admit the 
 purity and continuity of the European type. 
 We consider the old Eastern rule as a wound, 
 but not as a stain. Copper-coloured men out 
 of Africa overruled for centuries the religion 
 and patriotism of Spaniards. Yet I have 
 never heard that Don Ouixote was an Afri- 
 can fable on the lines of Uncle Remus. I 
 have never heard that the heavy black in the 
 pictures of Velasquez was due to a negro an- 
 cestry. In the case of Spain, which is close 
 to us, we can recognise the resurrection of a 
 Christian and cultured nation after its age 
 of bondage. But Russia is rather remote; 
 and those to whom nations are but names in 
 newspapers can really fancy, like Mr. Bar- 
 
52 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 ing's friend, that all Russian churches are 
 "mosques." ,Yet the land of Turgenev is 
 not a wilderness of fakirs; and even the fa- 
 natical Russian is as proud of being different 
 from the Mongol, as the fanatical Spaniard 
 was proud of being different from the Moor. 
 The town of Reading, as it exists, offers 
 few opportunities for piracy on the high 
 seas: yet it was the camp of the pirates in 
 Alfred's day. I should think it hard to call 
 the people of Berkshire half-Danish, merely 
 because they drove out the Danes. In short, 
 some temporary submergence under the sav- 
 age flood was the fate of many of the most 
 civilised states of Christendom; and it is 
 quite ridiculous to argue that Russia, which 
 wrestled hardest, must have recovered least. 
 Everywhere, doubtless, the East spread a 
 sort of enamel over the conquered countries, 
 but everywhere the enamel cracked. Actual 
 history, in fact, is exactly opposite to the 
 
THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 53 
 
 cheap proverb invented against the Musco- 
 vite. It is not true to say "Scratch a Rus- 
 sian and you find a Tartar." In the darkest 
 hour of the barbaric dominion it was truer to 
 say, "Scratch a Tartar and you find a Rus- 
 sian." It was the civilisation that survived 
 under all the barbarism. This vital ro- 
 mance of Russia, this revolution against 
 Asia, can be proved in pure fact: not only 
 from the almost superhuman activity of 
 Russia during the struggle, but also (which 
 is much rarer as human history goes) by her 
 quite consistent conduct since. She is the 
 only great nation which has really expelled 
 the Mongol from her country, and continued 
 to protest against the presence of the Mon- 
 gol in her continent. Knowing what he had 
 been in Russia, she knew what he would be 
 in Europe. In this she pursued a logical 
 line of thought which was, if anything, too 
 unsympathetic with the energies and reli- 
 
54 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 gions of the East. Every other country, one 
 may say, has been an ally of the Turk; that 
 is, of the Mongol and the Moslem. The 
 French played them as pieces against Aus- 
 tria; the English warmly supported them un- 
 der the Palmerston regime; even the young 
 Italians sent troops to the Crimea; and of 
 Prussia and her Austrian vassal it is nowa- 
 days needless to speak. For good or evil, it 
 is the fact of history that Russia is the only 
 Power in Europe that has never supported 
 the Crescent against the Cross. 
 
 That, doubtless, will appear an unimpor- 
 tant matter; but it may become important 
 under certain peculiar conditions. Suppose, 
 for the sake of argument, that there were a 
 powerful prince in Europe who had gone os- 
 tentatiously out of his way to pay reverence 
 to the remains of the Tartar, Mongol and 
 Moslem, left as an outpost in Europe. Sup- 
 pose there were a Christian Emperor who 
 
THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY ss 
 
 could not even go to the tomb of the Cruci- 
 fied, without pausing to congratulate the last 
 and living crucifier. If there were an Em- 
 peror who gave guns and guides and maps 
 and drill instructors to defend the remains 
 of the Mongol in Christendom, what should 
 we say to him? I think at least we might 
 ask him what he meant by his impudence, 
 when he talked about supporting a semi- 
 oriental power. That we support a semi- 
 oriental power, we deny. That he has sup- 
 ported an entirely oriental power cannot be 
 denied — ^no, not even by the man who did 
 it. 
 
 But here is to be noted the essential differ- 
 ence between Russia and Prussia; especially 
 by those who use the ordinary Liberal ar- 
 guments against the latter. Russia has a 
 policy which she pursues, if you will, through 
 evil and good; but at least so as to produce 
 good as well as evil. Let it be granted that 
 
56 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 the policy has made her oppressive to the 
 Finns and the Poles — though the Russian 
 Poles feel far less oppressed than do the 
 Prussian Poles. But it is a mere historic 
 fact, that if Russia has been a despot to some 
 small nations, she has been a deliverer to 
 others. She did, so far as in her lay, eman- 
 cipate the Servians or the Montenegrins. 
 But whom did Prussia ever emancipate — 
 even by accident? It is indeed somewhat 
 extraordinary that in the perpetual permuta- 
 tions of international politics the Hohenzol- 
 lerns have never gone astray into the path of 
 enlightenment. They have been in alliance 
 with almost everybody off and on; with 
 France, with England, with Austria, with 
 Russia. Can any one candidly say that they 
 have left on any one of these people the 
 faintest impress of progress or liberation *? 
 Prussia was the enemy of the French Mon- 
 archy; but a worse enemy of the French 
 
THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 57 
 
 Revolution. Prussia had been an enemy of 
 the Czar; but she was a worse enemy of the 
 Duma. Prussia totally disregarded Aus- 
 trian rights; but she is to-day quite ready to 
 inflict Austrian wrongs. This is the strong 
 particular difference between the one empire 
 and the other. Russia is pursuing certain 
 intelligible and sincere ends, which to her at 
 least are ideals, and for which, therefore, she 
 will make sacrifices and will protect the 
 weak. But the North German soldier is a 
 sort of abstract tyrant, everywhere and al- 
 ways on the side of materialistic tyranny. 
 This Teuton in uniform has been found in 
 strange places; shooting farmers before Sara- 
 toga and flogging soldiers in Surrey, hanging 
 niggers in Africa and raping girls in Wick- 
 low; but never, by some mysterious fatality, 
 lending a hand to the freeing of a single city 
 or the independence of one solitary flag. 
 Wherever scorn and prosperous oppression 
 
58 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 are, there is the Prussian; unconsciously con- 
 sistent, instinctively restrictive, innocently 
 evil; "following darkness like a dream." 
 
 Suppose we heard of a person (gifted with 
 some longevity) who had helped Alva to 
 persecute Dutch Protestants, then helped 
 Cromwell to persecute Irish Catholics, and 
 then helped Claverhouse to persecute Scotch 
 Puritans, we should find it rather easier to 
 call him a persecutor than to call him a 
 Protestant or a Catholic. Curiously enough 
 this is actually the position in which the Prus- 
 sian stands in Europe. No argument can 
 alter the fact that in three converging and 
 conclusive cases he has been on the side of 
 three distinct rulers of different religions, 
 who had nothing whatever in common except 
 that they were ruling oppressively. In 
 these three Governments, taken separately, 
 one can see something excusable or at least 
 human. When the Kaiser encouraged the 
 
THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 59 
 
 Russian rulers to crush the Revolution, the 
 Russian rulers undoubtedly believed they 
 were wrestling with an inferno of atheism 
 and anarchy. A Socialist of the ordinary 
 English kind cried out upon me when I spoke 
 of Stolypin, and said he was chiefly known 
 by the halter called "Stolypin's Necktie." 
 As a fact, there were many other things in- 
 teresting about Stolypin besides his necktie: 
 his policy of peasant proprietorship, his ex- 
 traordinary personal courage, and certainly 
 none more interesting than that movement 
 in his death agony, when he made the sign of 
 the cross towards the Czar, as the crown and 
 captain of his Christianity. But the Kaiser 
 does not regard the Czar as the captain of 
 Christianity. Far from it. What he sup- 
 ported in Stolypin was the necktie and noth- 
 ing but the necktie : the gallows and not the 
 cross. The Russian ruler did believe that 
 the Orthodox Church was orthodox. The 
 
6o THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 Austrian Archduke did really desire to make 
 the Catholic Church catholic. He did 
 really believe that he was being Pro-Catholic 
 in being Pro-Austrian. But the Kaiser can- 
 not be Pro-Catholic, and therefore cannot 
 have been really Pro-Austrian, he was simply 
 and solely Anti-Servian. Nay, even in the 
 cruel and sterile strength of Turkey, any one 
 with imagination can see something of the 
 tragedy and therefore of the tenderness of 
 true belief. The worst that can be said of 
 the Moslems is, as the poet put it, they of- 
 fered to man the choice of the Koran or the 
 sword. The best that can be said for the 
 German is that he does not care about the 
 Koran, but is satisfied if he can have the 
 sword. And for me, I confess, even the sins 
 of these three other striving empires take on, 
 in comparison, something that is sorrowful 
 and dignified : and I feel they do not deserve 
 that this little Lutheran lounger should pat- 
 
THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 61 
 
 ronise all that is evil in them, while ignoring 
 all that is good. He is not Catholic, he is 
 not Orthodox, he is not Mahomedan. He 
 is merely an old gentleman who wishes to 
 share the crime though he cannot share the 
 creed. He desires to be a persecutor by the 
 pang without the palm. So strongly do all 
 the instincts of the Prussian drive against 
 liberty, that he would rather oppress other 
 people's subjects than think of anybody go- 
 ing without the benefits of oppression. He 
 is a sort of disinterested despot. He is as 
 disinterested as the devil who is ready to do 
 any one's dirty work. 
 
 This would seem obviously fantastic were 
 it not supported by solid facts which cannot 
 be explained otherwise. Indeed it would be 
 inconceivable if we were thinking of a whole 
 people, consisting of free and varied indi- 
 viduals. But in Prussia the governing class 
 is really a governing class: and a very few 
 
62 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 people are needed to think along these lines 
 to make all the other people act along them. 
 And the paradox of Prussia is this: that 
 while its princes and nobles have no other 
 aim on this earth but to destroy democracy 
 wherever it shows itself, they have contrived 
 to get themselves trusted, not as wardens of 
 the past but as forerunners of the future. 
 Even they cannot believe that their theory is 
 popular, but they do believe that it is pro- 
 gressive. Here again we find the spiritual 
 chasm between the two monarchies in ques- 
 tion. The Russian institutions are, in many 
 cases, really left in the rear of the Russian 
 people, and many of the Russian people 
 know it. But the Prussian institutions are 
 supposed to be in advance of the Prussian 
 people, and most of the Prussian people be- 
 lieve it. It is thus m^uch easier for the war- 
 lords to go everywhere and impose a hopeless 
 slavery upon every one, for they have al- 
 
THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 63 
 
 ready imposed a sort of hopeful slavery on 
 their own simple race. 
 
 And when men shall speak to us of the 
 hoary iniquities of Russia and of how an- 
 tiquated is the Russian system, we shall an- 
 swer "Yes; that is the superiority of Rus- 
 sia." Their institutions are part of their his- 
 tory, whether as relics or fossils. Their 
 abuses have really been uses: that is to say, 
 they have been used up. If they have old 
 engines of terror or torment, they may fall 
 to pieces from mere rust, like an old coat of 
 armour. But in the case of the Prussian tyr- 
 anny, if it be tyranny at all, it is the whole 
 point of its claim that it is not antiquated, 
 but just going to begin, like the showman. 
 Prussia has a whole thriving factory of 
 thumbscrews, a whole humming workshop 
 of wheels and racks, of the newest and neat- 
 est pattern, with which to win back Europe 
 to the Reaction . . . infandum renovare 
 
64 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 dolor em. And if we wish to test the truth 
 of this, it can be done by the same method 
 which showed us that Russia, if her race or 
 religion could sometimes make her an in- 
 vader and an oppressor, could also be made 
 an emancipator and a knight errant. In the 
 same way, if the Russian institutions are old- 
 fashioned, they honestly exhibit the good as 
 well as the bad that can be found in old- 
 fashioned things. In their police system 
 they have an inequality which is against our 
 ideas of law. But in their commune system 
 they have an equality that is older than law 
 itself. Even when they flogged each other 
 like barbarians, they called upon each other 
 by their Christian names like children. At 
 their worst they retained all the best of a 
 rude society. At their best, they are simply 
 good, like good children or good nuns. But 
 in Prussia all that is best in the civilised 
 machinery is put at the service of all that is 
 
THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 65 
 
 worst in the barbaric mind. Here again 
 the Prussian has no accidental merits, 
 none of those lucky survivals, none of those 
 late repentances, which make the patchwork 
 glory of Russia. Here all is sharpened to a 
 point and pointed to a purpose and that pur- 
 pose, if words and acts have any meaning at 
 all, is the destruction of liberty throughout 
 the world. 
 
IV 
 
 THE ESCAPE OF FOLLY 
 
 In considering the Prussian point of view 
 we have been considering what seems to be 
 mainly a mental limitation: a kind of knot 
 in the brain. Towards the problem of Slav 
 population, of English colonisation, of 
 French armies and reinforcements, it shows 
 the same strange philosophic sulks. So far 
 as I can follow it, it seems to amount to say- 
 ing "It is very wrong that you should be 
 superior to me, because I am superior to 
 you." The spokesmen of this system seem 
 to have a curious capacity for concentrating 
 this entanglement or contradiction, some- 
 times into a single paragraph, or even a 
 single sentence. I have already referred to 
 the German Emperor's celebrated suggestion 
 that in order to avert the peril of Hunnish- 
 
THE ESCAPE OF FOLLY 67 
 
 ness we should all become Huns. A much 
 stronger instance is his more recent order to 
 his troops touching the war in Northern 
 France. As most people know, his words 
 ran "It is m.y Royal and Imperial command 
 that you concentrate your energies, for the 
 immediate present, upon one single purpose, 
 and that is that you address all your skill and 
 all the valour of my soldiers to exterminate 
 first the treacherous English and to walk 
 over General French's contemptible little 
 Army." The rudeness of the remark an 
 Englishman can afford to pass over; what I 
 am interested in is the mentality; the train 
 of thought that can manage to entangle it- 
 self even in so brief a space. If French's 
 little Army is contemptible, it would seem 
 clear that all the skill and valour of the Ger- 
 man Army had better not be concentrated on 
 it, but on the larger and less contemptible al- 
 lies. If all the skill and valour of the Ger- 
 
68 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 man Army are concentrated on it, it is not 
 being treated as contemptible. But the 
 Prussian rhetorician had two incompatible 
 sentiments in his mind; and he insisted on 
 saying them both at once. He wanted to 
 think of an English Army as a small thing; 
 but he also wanted to think of an English 
 defeat as a big thing. He wanted to exult, 
 at the same moment, in the utter weakness 
 of the British in their attack; and the su- 
 preme skill and valour of the Germans in 
 repelling such an attack. Somehow it must 
 be made a common and obvious collapse for 
 England; and yet a daring and unexpected 
 triumph for Germany. In trying to express 
 these contradictory conceptions simulta- 
 neously, he got rather mixed. Therefore he 
 bade Germania fill all her vales and moun- 
 tains with the dying agonies of this almost 
 invisible earwig; and let the impure blood of 
 
THE ESCAPE OF FOLLY 69 
 
 this cockroach redden the Rhine down to the 
 sea. 
 
 But it would be unfair to base the criti- 
 cism on the utterance of any accidental and 
 hereditary prince: and it is quite equally 
 clear in the case of the philosophers who 
 have been held up to us, even in England, as 
 the very prophets of progress. And in noth- 
 ing is it shown more sharply than in the curi- 
 ous confused talk about Race and especially 
 about the Teutonic Race. Professor Har- 
 nack and similar people are reproaching us, 
 I understand, for having broken "the bond 
 of Teutonism" : a bond which the Prussians 
 have strictly observed both in breach and ob- 
 servance. We note it in their open annexa- 
 tion of lands wholly inhabited by negroes, 
 such as Denmark. We note it equally in 
 their instant and joyful recognition of the 
 flaxen hair and light blue eyes of the Turks. 
 
70 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 But it is still the abstract principle of Pro- 
 fessor Harnack which interests me most ; and 
 in following it I have the same complexity 
 of enquiry, but the same simplicity of result. 
 Comparing the Professor's concern about 
 "Teutonism" with his unconcern about Bel- 
 gium, I can only reach the following result: 
 "A man need not keep a promise he has made. 
 But a man must keep a promise he has not 
 made." There certainly was a treaty bind- 
 ing Britain to Belgium ; if it was only a scrap 
 of papfer. If there was any treaty binding 
 Britain to Teutonism it is, to say the least 
 of it, a lost scrap of paper : almost what one 
 might call a scrap of waste-paper. Here 
 again the pendants under consideration ex- 
 hibit the illogical perversity that makes the 
 brain reel. There is obligation and there is 
 no obligation: sometimes it appears that 
 Germany and England must keep faith with 
 each other; sometimes that Germany need 
 
THE ESCAPE OF FOLLY 71 
 
 not keep faith with anybody and anything; 
 sometimes that we alone among European 
 peoples are almost entitled to be Germans; 
 sometimes that beside us Russians and 
 Frenchmen almost rise to a Germanic love- 
 liness of character. But through all there is, 
 hazy but not hypocritical, this sense of some 
 common Teutonism. 
 
 Professor Haeckel, another of the wit- 
 nesses raised up against us, attained to some 
 celebrity at one time through proving the 
 remarkable resemblance between two differ- 
 ent things by printing duplicate pictures of 
 the same thing. Professor HaeckePs con- 
 tribution to biology, in this case, was exactly 
 like Professor Harnack's contribution to 
 ethnology. Professor Hamack knows what 
 a German is like. When he wants to imag- 
 ine what an Englishman is like, he simply 
 photographs the same German over again. 
 In both cases there is probably sincerity as 
 
72 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 well as simplicity. Haeckel was so certain 
 that the species illustrated in emb)TO really 
 are closely related and linked up, that it 
 seemed to him a small thing to simplify it by 
 mere repetition. Harnack is so certain that 
 the German and Englishman are almost alike, 
 that he really risks the generalisation that 
 they are exactly alike. He photographs, so 
 to speak, the same fair and foolish face twice 
 over; and calls it a remarkable resemblance 
 between cousins. Thus he can prove the ex- 
 istence of Teutonism just about as conclu- 
 sively as Haeckel has proved the more ten- 
 able proposition of the non-existence of God. 
 Now the German and the Englishman are 
 not in the least alike — except in the sense 
 that neither of them are negroes. They are, 
 in everything good and evil, more unlike 
 than any other two men we can take at ran- 
 dom from the great European family. They 
 are opposite from the roots of their history, 
 
THE ESCAPE OF FOLLY 73 
 
 nay, of their geography. It is an under- 
 statement to call Britain insular. Britain 
 is not only an island, but an island slashed 
 by the sea till it nearly splits into three is- 
 lands; and even the Midlands can almost 
 smell the salt. Germany is a powerful, 
 beautiful and fertile inland country, which 
 can only find the sea by one or two twisted 
 and narrow paths, as people find a subter- 
 ranean lake. Thus the British Navy is 
 really national because it is natural; it has 
 co-hered out of hundreds of accidental ad- 
 ventures of ships and shipmen before Chau- 
 cer's time and after it. But the German 
 Navy is an artificial thing; as artificial as a 
 constructed Alp would be in England. Wil- 
 liam 11 has simply copied the British Navy 
 as Frederick II copied the French Army: 
 and this Japanese or anti-like assiduity in 
 imitation is one of the hundred qualities 
 which the Germans have and the English 
 
74 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 markedly have not. There are other Ger- 
 man superiorities which are very much su- 
 perior. The one or two really jolly things 
 that the Germans have got are precisely the 
 things which the English haven't got: not- 
 ably a real habit of popular music and of the 
 ancient songs of the people, not merely 
 spreading from the towns or caught from the 
 professionals. In this the Germans rather 
 resemble the Welsh: though heaven knows 
 what becomes of Teutonism if they do. But 
 the difference between the Germans and the 
 English goes deeper than all these signs of 
 it; they differ more than any other two 
 Europeans in the normal posture of the mind. 
 Above all, they differ in what is the most 
 English of all English traits; that shame 
 which the French may be* right in calling 
 "the bad shame"; for it is certainly mixed 
 up with pride and suspicion, the upshot of 
 which we call shyness. Even an English- 
 
THE ESCAPE OF FOLLY 75 
 
 man's rudeness is often rooted in his being 
 embarrassed. But a German's rudeness is 
 rooted in his never being embarrassed. He 
 eats and makes love noisily. He never feels 
 a speech or a song or a sermon or a large 
 meal to be what the English call "out of 
 place" in particular circumstances. When 
 Germans are patriotic and religious they 
 have no re-actions against patriotism and 
 religion as have the English and the French. 
 Nay, the mistake of Germany in the modern 
 disaster largely arose from the facts that she 
 thought England Wcis simple when England 
 is very subtle. She thought that because 
 our politics have become largely financial 
 that they had become wholly financial; that 
 because our aristocrats had become pretty 
 cynical that they had become entirely cor- 
 rupt. They could not seize the subtlety by 
 which a rather used-up English gentleman 
 might sell a coronet when he would not sell 
 
76 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 a fortress; might lower the public standards 
 and yet refuse to lower the flag. In short, 
 the Germans are quite sure that they under- 
 stand us entirely, because they do not un- 
 derstand us at all. Possibly if they began 
 to understand us they might hate us even 
 more: but I would rather be hated for some 
 small but real reason than pursued with love 
 on account of all kinds of qualities which 
 I do not possess and which I do not desire. 
 And when the Germans get their first genuine 
 glimpse of what modern England is like they 
 will discover that England has a very broken, 
 belated and inadequate sense of having an 
 obligation to Europe, but no sort of sense 
 whatever of having any obligation to Teu- 
 tonism. 
 
 This is the last and strongest of the 
 Prussian qualities we have here considered. 
 There is in stupidity of this sort a strange 
 slippery strength : because it can be not only 
 
THE ESCAPE OF FOLLY 77 
 
 outside rules but outside reason. The man 
 who really cannot see that he is contradicting 
 himself has a great advantage in controversy; 
 though the advantage breaks down when he 
 tries to reduce it to simple addition, to chess, 
 or to the game called war. It is the same 
 about the stupidity of the one-sided kinship. 
 The drunkard who is quite certain that a 
 total stranger is his long-lost brother, has a 
 greater advantage until it comes to matters 
 of detail. "We must have chaos within" 
 said Nietzsche, "that we may give birth to a 
 dancing star." 
 
 In these slight notes I have suggested the 
 principal strong points of the Prussian char- 
 acter. A failure in honour which almost 
 amounts to a failure in memory: an ego- 
 mania that is honestly blind to the fact that 
 the other party is an ego; and, above all, an 
 actual itch for tyranny and interference, the 
 devil which everywhere torments the idle 
 
78 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 and the proud. To these must be added a 
 certain mental shapelessness which can ex- 
 pand or contract without reference to reason 
 or record; a potential infinity of excuses. If 
 the English had been on the German side, 
 the German professors would have noted 
 what irresistible energies had evolved the 
 Teutons. As the English are on the other 
 side, the German professors will say that 
 these Teutons were not sufficiently evolved. 
 Or they will say that they were just suffi- 
 ciently evolved to show that they were not 
 Teutons. Probably they will say both. 
 But the truth is that all that they call evolu- 
 tion should rather be called evasion. They 
 tell us they are opening windows of enlight- 
 enment and doors of progress. The truth is 
 that they are breaking up the whole house of 
 the human intellect, that they may abscond in 
 any direction. There is an ominous and al- 
 most monstrous parallel between the posi- 
 
THE ESCAPE OF FOLLY 79 
 
 tion of their over-rated philosophers and of 
 their comparatively under-rated soldiers. 
 For what their professors call roads of prog- 
 ress are really routes of escape. 
 
LETTERS TO AN OLD GARIBALDIAN 
 
 Italy, twice hast thou spoken; and time is athirst 
 for the third. 
 
 — Swinburne. 
 
 My Dear 
 
 It is a long time since we met; and I fear 
 these letters may never reach you. But in 
 these violent times I remember with a curi- 
 ous vividness how you brandished a paint- 
 brush about your easel when I was a boy ; and 
 how it thrilled me to think that you had so 
 brandished a bayonet against the Teutons — 
 I hope w'ith the same precision and happy 
 results. Round about that period, the very 
 pigments seemed to have some sort of pictur- 
 esque connection with your national story. 
 There seemed to be something gorgeous and 
 
 terrible about Venetian Red; and something 
 
 80 
 
LETTERS TO A GARIBALDIAN 81 
 
 quite catastrophic about Burnt Sienna. But 
 somehow or other, when I saw in the street 
 yesterday the colours on your flag, it re- 
 minded me of the colours on your palette. 
 
 You need not fear that I shall try to en- 
 tangle you or your countrymen in the mat- 
 ters which it is for Italians alone to decide. 
 You know the perils of either course much 
 better than I do. Italy, most assuredly, has 
 no need to prove her courage. She has 
 risked everything in standing out that she 
 could risk by coming in. The proclamations 
 and press of Germany make it plain that the 
 Germans have risen to a height of sensibility 
 hardly to be distinguished from madness. 
 Supposing the nightmare of a Prussian vic- 
 tory, they will revenge themselves on things 
 more remote than the Triple Alliance. 
 There was a promise of peace between them 
 and Belgium; there was none between them 
 and England. The promise to Belgium 
 
82 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 they broke. The promise of England they 
 invented. It is called the Treaty of Teuton- 
 ism. No one ever heard of it in this coun- 
 try; but it seems well known in academic cir- 
 cles in Germany. It seems to be something, 
 connected with the colour of one's hair. 
 But I repeat that I am not concerned to in- 
 terfere with your decision, save in so far as 
 I may provide some materials for it by de- 
 scribing our own. 
 
 For I think the first, perhaps the only, 
 fruitful work an Englishman can do now for 
 the formation of foreign opinion is to talk 
 about what he really understands, the condi- 
 tion of British opinion. It is as simple as it 
 is solid. For the first time, perhaps, what 
 we call the United Kingdom entirely de- 
 serves its name. There has been nothing 
 like such unanimity within an Englishman's 
 recollection. The Irish and even the Welsh 
 were largely pro-Boers, so were some of the 
 
LETTERS TO A GARIBALDIAN 83 
 
 most English of the English. No one could 
 have been more English than Fox, yet he de- 
 nounced the war witli Napoleon. No one 
 could be more English than Cobden, but he 
 denounced the war in the Crimea. It is 
 really extraordinary to find a united Eng- 
 land. Indeed, until lately, it was extraor- 
 dinary to find a united Englishman. Those 
 of us who, like the present writer, repudiated 
 the South African war from its beginnings, 
 had yet a divided heart in the matter, and 
 felt certain aspects of it as glorious as well 
 as infamous. The first fact I can offer you 
 is the unquestionable fact that all these 
 doubts and divisions have ceased. Nor have 
 they ceased by any compromise; but by a 
 universal flash of faith — or, if you will, of 
 suspicion. Nor were our internal conflicts 
 lightly abandoned; nor our reconciliations an 
 easy matter. I am, as you are, a democrat 
 and a citizen of Europe ; and my friends and 
 
84 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 I had grown to loathe the plutocracy and 
 privilege which sat in the high places of our 
 country with a loathing which we thought 
 no love could cast out. Of these rich men I 
 will not speak here; with your permission, 
 I will not think of them. War is a terrible 
 business in any case ; and to some intellectual 
 temperaments this is the most terrible part 
 of it. That war takes the young; that war 
 sunders the lovers; that all over Europe 
 brides and bridegrooms are parting at the 
 church door : all that is only a commonplace 
 to commonplace people. To give up one's 
 love for one's country is very great. But to 
 give up one's hate for one's country, this may 
 also have in it something of pride and some- 
 thing of purification. 
 
 What is it that has made the British peo- 
 ples thus defer not only their artificial pa- 
 rade of party politics but their real social and 
 moral complaints and demands^ What is 
 
LETTERS TO A GARIBALDIAN 85 
 
 it that has united all of us against the Prus- 
 sian, as against a mad dog'? It is the pres- 
 ence of a certain spirit, as unmistakable as a 
 pungent smell, which we feel is capable of 
 withering all the good things in this world. 
 The burglary of Belgium, the bribe to betray 
 France, these are not excuses; they are facts. 
 But they are only the facts by which wt 
 came to know of the presence of the spirit. 
 They do not suffice to define the whole spirit 
 itself. A good rough summary is to say that 
 it is the spirit of barbarism; but indeed it is 
 something worse. It is the spirit of second- 
 rate civilisation; and the distinction involves 
 the most important differences. Granted 
 that it could exist, pure barbarism could not 
 last long; as pure babyhood cannot last long. 
 Of his own nature the baby is interested in 
 the ticking of a watch; and the time will 
 come when you will have to tell him, if you 
 only tell him the wrong time. And that is 
 
86 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 exactly what the second-rate civilisation 
 does. 
 
 But the vital point is here. The abstract 
 barbarian would copy. The cockney and 
 incomplete civilisation always sets itself up 
 to be copied. And in the case here consid- 
 ered, the German thinks that it is not only 
 his business to spread education, but to spread 
 compulsory education. "Science combined 
 with organisation," says Professor Ostwald 
 of Berlin University, "makes us terrible to 
 our opponents and ensures a German future 
 for Europe." That is, as shortly as it can 
 be put, what we are fighting about. We are 
 fighting to prevent a German future for 
 Europe. We think it would be narrower, 
 nastier, less sane, less capable of liberty and 
 of laughter, than any of the worst parts of 
 the European past. And when I cast about 
 for a form in which to explain shortly why 
 we think so, I thought of you. For this is 
 
LETTERS TO A GARIBALDIAN 87 
 
 a matter so large that I know not how to ex- 
 press it except in terms of artists like you, in 
 tiie service of beauty and the faith in free- 
 dom. Prussia, at least cannot help me; 
 Lord Palmerston, I believe, called it a coun- 
 try of damned professors. Lord Palmers- 
 ton, I fear, used the word "damned" more or 
 less flippantly. I use it reverently. 
 
 Rome, at her very weakest, has always 
 been a river that wanders and widens and 
 that waters many fields. Berlin, at its 
 strongest, will never be anything but a 
 whirlpool, which seeks its own centre, and is 
 sucked down. It would only narrow all the 
 rest of Europe, as it has already narrowed 
 all the rest of Germany. There is a spirit 
 of diseased egoism, which at last makes all 
 things spin upon one pin-point in the brain. 
 It is a spirit expressed more often in the 
 slangs than in the tongues of men. The 
 English call it a fad. I do not know what 
 
88 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 the Italians call it; the Prussians call it 
 philosophy. 
 
 Here is the sort of instance that made me 
 think of you. What would you feel first, 
 let us say, if I mentioned Michael Angelo*? 
 For the first moment, perhaps, boredom: 
 such as I feel when Americans ask me about 
 Stratford-on-Avon. But, supposing that just 
 fear quieted, you would feel what I and 
 every one else can feel. It might be the 
 sense of the majestic hands of Man upon the 
 locks of the last doors of life; large and ter- 
 rible hands, like those of that youth who 
 poises the stone above Florence, and looks 
 out upon the circle of the hills. It might be 
 that huge heave of flank and chest and throat 
 in "The Slave," which is like an earthquake 
 lifting a whole landscape; it might be that 
 tremendous Madonna, whose charity is more 
 strong than death. Anyhow, your thoughts 
 would be something worthy of the man's 
 
LETTERS TO A GARIBALDIAN 89 
 
 terrible paganism and his more terrible Chris- 
 tianity. Who but God could have graven 
 Michael Angelo; who came so near to grav- 
 ing the Mother of God^ 
 
 German culture deals with the matter as 
 follows: — "Michelangelo Buonarotti (1475- 
 1564). — (=Bernhard) ancestor of the fam- 
 ily, lived in Florence about 1210. He had 
 two sons, Berlinghieri and Buonarrota. By 
 this name recurring frequently in later gen- 
 erations, the family came to be called. It 
 is a German name, compounded of Bona 
 (=Bohn) and Hrodo, Roto (=Rohde, 
 Rothe) Bona and Rotto are cited as Lom- 
 bard names. Buonarotti is perhaps the old 
 Lombard Beonrad, corresponding to the 
 word Bonroth. Corresponding names are 
 Mackrodt, Osterroth, Leonard." And so on, 
 and so on, and so on. 'Tn his face he has al- 
 ways been well-coloured . . . the eyes might 
 be called small rather than large, of the 
 
90 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 colour of horn, but variable with 'flecks' of 
 yellow and blue. Hair and beard are black. 
 These particulars are confirmed by the por- 
 traits. First and foremost take the portrait 
 of Bugiardini in Museo Buonarotti. Here 
 comes to view the 'flecked' appearance of the 
 iris, especially in the right eye. The left 
 may be described as almost wholly blue." 
 And so on, and so on, and so on. "In the 
 Museo Civico at Pavia, is a fresco likeness by 
 an unknown hand, in which this fresh red is 
 distinctly recognisable on the face. Taking 
 all these bodily characteristics into considera- 
 tion, it must be said from an anthropological 
 point of view that though originally of Ger- 
 man family he was a hybrid between the 
 North and West brunette race." 
 
 Would you take the trouble to prove that 
 Michael Angelo was an Italian that this man 
 takes to prove that he was a German*? Of 
 course not. The only impression this man 
 
LETTERS TO A GARIBALDI AN 91 
 
 (who is a recognised Prussian historian) pro- 
 duces on your mind or mine is that he does 
 not care about Michael Angelo. For you, 
 being an Italian, are therefore something 
 more than an Italian; and I being an English- 
 man, something more than an Englishman. 
 But this poor fellow really cannot be any- 
 thing more than a Prussian. He digs and 
 digs to find dead Prussians, in the catacombs 
 of Rome or under the ruins of Troy. If he 
 can find one blue eye lying about somewhere, 
 he is satisfied. He has no philosophy. He 
 has a hobby, which is collecting Germans. 
 It would probably be vain for you and me to 
 point out that we could prove anything by 
 the sort of ingenuity which finds the German 
 "rothe" in Buonarotti. We could have 
 great fun depriving Germany of all her 
 geniuses in that style. We could say that 
 Moltke must have been an Italian, from the 
 old Latin root 7nol — indicating the sweetness 
 
92 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 of that general's disposition. We might say 
 Bismarck was a Frenchman, since his name 
 begins with the popular theatrical cry of 
 "Bis !" We might say Goethe was an Eng- 
 lishman, because his name begins with the 
 popular sporting cry "Go!" But the ulti- 
 mate difference between us and the Prussian 
 professor is simply that we are not mad. 
 
 The father of Frederick the Great, the 
 founder of the more modem HohenzoUerns, 
 was mad. His madness consisted of steal- 
 ing giants; like an unscrupulous travelling 
 showman. Any man much over six foot 
 high, whether he were called the Russian 
 Giant or the Irish Giant or the Chinese 
 Giant or the Hottentot Giant, was in danger 
 of being kidnapped and imprisoned in a 
 Prussian uniform. It is the same mean sort 
 of madness that is working in Prussian pro- 
 fessors such as the one I have quoted. They 
 can get no further than the notion of steal- 
 
LETTERS TO A GARIBALDIAN 93 
 
 ing giants. I will not bore you now with all 
 the other giants they have tried to steal; it is 
 enough to say that St. Paul, Leonardo da 
 Vinci, and Shakespeare himself are among 
 the monstrosities exhibited at Frederick- 
 William fair — on grounds as good as those 
 quoted above. But I have put this particu- 
 lar case before you, as an artist rather than 
 an Italian, to show what I mean when I ob- 
 ject to a "German future for Europe." I 
 object to something which believes very 
 much in itself, and in which I do not in the 
 least believe. I object to something which 
 is conceited and small-minded; but which 
 also has that kind of pertinacity which al- 
 ways belongs to lunatics. It wants to be 
 able to congratulate itself on Michael An- 
 gelo; never to congratulate the world. It 
 is the spirit that can be seen in those who 
 go bald trying to trace a genealogy; or go 
 bankrupt trying to make out a claim to some 
 
94 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 remote estate. The Prussian has the incon- 
 sistency of the parvenu; he will labour to 
 prove that he is related to some gentleman 
 of the Renaissance, even while he boasts of 
 being able to "buy him up." If the Italians 
 were really great, why — they were really 
 Germans; and if they weren't really Ger- 
 mans, well then, they weren't really great. 
 It is an occupation for an old maid. 
 
 Three or four hundred years ago, in the 
 sad silence that had followed the compara- 
 tive failure of the noble effort of the Mid- 
 dle Ages, there came upon all Europe a storm 
 out of the south. Its tumult is of many 
 tongues; one can hear in it the laughter of 
 Rabelais, or, for that matter, the lyrics of 
 Shakespeare ; but the dark heart of the storm 
 was indeed more austral and volcanic; a 
 noise of thunderous wings and the name of 
 Michael the Archangel. And when it had 
 shocked and purified the world and passed, 
 
LETTERS TO A GARIBALDIAN 95 
 
 a Prussian professor found a feather fallen 
 to earth; and proved (in several volumes) 
 that it could only have come from a Prus- 
 sian Eagle. He had seen one — in a cage. 
 
 Yours , 
 
 G. K. Chesterton. 
 
 My Dear , 
 
 The facts before all Europeans to-day are 
 so fundamental that I still find it easier to 
 talk about them to you as to an old friend, 
 rather than put it in the shape of a pamphlet. 
 In my last letter I pointed out two facts 
 which are pivots. The first is that, to any 
 really cultured person, Prussia is second-rate. 
 The second is that to almost any Prussian, 
 Prussia is really first-rate; and is prepared, 
 quite literally, to police the rest of the world. 
 
 For the first matter, the comparative in- 
 feriority of German culture cannot be 
 doubted by people like you. One of the 
 
96 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 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 wher- 
 ever the German culture had passed in tri- 
 umph. 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 
 
LETTERS TO A GARIBALDIAN 97 
 
 of arms on it, designed by some rising Ger- 
 man 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 al- 
 most 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 sec- 
 ond-rate. All the German excitement about 
 the colonies of England is only a half under- 
 standing of what was once heroic and is now 
 largely caddish. The German Emperor's 
 naval vision is a bad copy of Nelson, as cer- 
 
98 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 tainly as Frederick the Great's verses were a 
 bad copy of Voltaire. 
 
 But the second point was even more im- 
 portant; 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 
 
LETTERS TO A GARIBALDIAN 99 
 
 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 
 power; and this wild spirit whirled us into 
 the mad course of respecting a treaty we had 
 signed. They can find in us no treason ex- 
 cept that we keep our treaties: failing to do 
 this I call failing in controversy. They 
 have failed in popular persuasion. They 
 have had a very good opportunity. The 
 British Empire does contain many people 
 who have been badly treated in various ways : 
 the Irish, the Boers; nay, the Americans 
 themselves, whose national existence began 
 with being badly treated. With these the 
 Prussians have done comparatively little; 
 and with Europeans of your sort nothing. 
 They have never once really sympathised 
 
100 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 with the feeling of a Switzer for Switzer- 
 land; the feeling of a Norwegian for Nor- 
 way; the feeling of a Tuscan for Tuscany. 
 Even when nations are neutral, Prussia can 
 hardly bear them to be patriotic. Even 
 when they are courting every one else they 
 can praise no one but themselves. They fail 
 in diplomacy, they fail in debate, they fail 
 even in demagogy. They have stupid plots, 
 stupid explanations, and even stupid apolo- 
 gies. But there is one thing they really do 
 not fail in. They do not fail in finding peo- 
 ple stupid enough to carry them out. 
 
 Now, it is this question I would ask you 
 to consider; you, as a good middle type of 
 the Latins, a Liberal but a Catholic, an art- 
 ist but a soldier. The danger to the whole 
 civilisation of which Rome was the foun- 
 tain lies in this. That the more this strange 
 Pruss people fail in all the other things, the 
 more they will fall back on this mere fact of 
 
LETTERS TO A GARIBALDIAN loi 
 
 a brutal obedience. They will give orders; 
 they have nothing else to give. I say that 
 this is the question for you ; I do not say, I do 
 not dream of saying, that the answer is for 
 me. It is for you to weigh the chance that 
 their very failures in the arts of peace will 
 drive them back upon the arts of war. They 
 could not, and they did not, dupe your 
 people in diplomacy. They did the most 
 undiplomatic thing that can be done; they 
 concealed a breach of partnership without 
 even concealing the concealment. They in- 
 stigated the intrigue in Austria in such a way 
 that Italy could honestly claim all the free- 
 dom of past ignorance, combined with all 
 the disillusionment of present knowledge. 
 They so ran the Triple Alliance that they had 
 to admit your grievance, at the very moment 
 when they claimed your aid. The English 
 are stupider and less sensitive than you are; 
 but even the English found the German 
 
102 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 Chancellor's diplomacy not insinuating but 
 simply insulting; I swear I would be a bet- 
 ter diplomatist myself. In the same way, 
 there is no danger of people like you being 
 corrupted in controversy. There is no fear 
 that the professors who pullulate all over 
 the Baltic Plain will overcome the Latins in 
 logic. Some of them even claim to be super- 
 logical; and say they are too big for syl- 
 logisms; generally having found even one 
 syllogism too big for them. If they com- 
 plain either of your abstention from their 
 cause or your adhesion to any other, you 
 have an unanswerable answer. You will 
 say, as you did say, that you did not break 
 the Triple Alliance, even for the sake of 
 peace. It was they who broke it for the 
 sake of war. You, obviously, had as much 
 right to be consulted about Servia as Aus- 
 tria had; and on the mere chess-board of 
 argument it is mate in one move. Nor are 
 
LETTERS TO A GARIBALDI AN 103 
 
 they in the least fitted to make an appeal 
 to the popular sentiment of your people. 
 The English, I dare say, and the French, 
 have talked an amazing amount of nonsense 
 about you; but they understand a little bet- 
 ter. They do not write exactly like this, 
 which is from the most public and accepted 
 Prussian political philosopher (Chamber- 
 lain). "Who can live in Italy to-day and 
 mix with its amiable and highly gifted in- 
 habitants without feeling with pain that here 
 a great nation is lost, irredeemably lost, be- 
 cause it lacks the inner driving power," etc., 
 which has brought Von Kluck so trium- 
 phantly through Paris. Even a half-educated 
 Englishman, who has heard of no Italian 
 poet except Dante, knows that he was some- 
 thing more than amiable. Even a positively 
 illiterate Frenchman, who has heard of no 
 Italian warrior except Napoleon, knows that 
 it was not in "inner driving force" that the 
 
104 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 artilleryman in question was deficient. 
 "Who can live in Italy to-day'? " Evi- 
 dently the Prussian philosopher can't. His 
 impressions are taken from Italian operas; 
 not from Italian streets; certainly not from 
 Italian fields. As a matter of fact such im- 
 ages of Italy as burn in the memories of most 
 open-minded Northerners who have been 
 there, are of exactly the other kind. I for 
 one should be inclined to say, "Who can live 
 in Italy to-day without feeling that a woman 
 feeding children, or a man chopping wood, 
 may almost touch him with fear with the 
 fulness of their humanity : so that he can al- 
 most smell blood, as one smells burning^" 
 Italians often look lazy; that is, they look 
 as if they would not move; but not as if 
 they could not move, as many Germans do. 
 But even though this formula fitted the Ital- 
 ians, it seems scarcely calculated to please 
 them. For the Prussians, then, with the 
 
LETTERS TO A GARIBALDI AN 105 
 
 failure of their diplomacy, the failure of 
 their philosophy, we may also place the fail- 
 ure of their appeals to a foreign people. 
 The Prussian writer may continue his at- 
 tempts to soothe and charm you by telling 
 you that you are irredeemably lost, and that 
 all great Italians must have been something 
 else. But the method seems to me ill 
 adapted to popular propaganda; and I can- 
 not but say that on this third point of per- 
 suasion, the German attempt is not striking. 
 Now all this is important for this reason. 
 If you consider it carefully you will see why 
 Europe must, at whatever cost, break Ger- 
 many in battle: and put an end to her mili- 
 tary and material power to do things. If 
 we all have to fight for it, if we all have to 
 die for it, it must be done. If we find allies 
 in the dwarfs of Greenland or the giants of 
 Patagonia, it must be done. And the rea- 
 son is that unless it is literally and materially 
 
io6 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 done, other things will be literally and ma- 
 terially done; and horrify the heavens. 
 They will be silly things; they will be be- 
 nighted 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 Prus- 
 sian 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 beat- 
 ing 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 Prus- 
 sian 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 
 
LETTERS TO A GARIBALDIAN 107 
 
 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 
 
io8 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 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 col- 
 lected their own. They do not feel atmos- 
 pheres. They are all a little deaf; as they 
 are all a little short-sighted. They are an- 
 noyed when their enemies, after such ex- 
 periences 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 partner- 
 ship, or to spare a harmless population, they 
 will find such restrictions chilling and irk- 
 some. 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 
 
LETTERS TO A GARIBALDIAN 109 
 
 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 can- 
 not go the whole length of those severe 
 critics who say that a Prussian will never 
 keep his promise. 
 
 Unfortunately, it is precisely this sort of 
 actuality and fulfilment that makes it urgent 
 that Europe should put forth her whole 
 energy to drag down these antique demoniacs ; 
 these idiots filled with force as by fiends. 
 They will do things, as a maniac will, until 
 he cannot do them. To me it seemed that 
 some things could not be said and done. I 
 thought a rnan would have been ashamed to 
 bribe a new enemy like England to betray 
 an old enemy like France. I thought a man 
 would have been ashamed to punish the 
 
no THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 pure self-defence of folk so offenceless as 
 the Belgians. These hopes must go from 
 us, my friend. There is only one thing 
 of which the Prussian would be ashamed; 
 and of that, we have sworn to God, he shall 
 taste before the end. 
 
 My Dear 
 
 The Prussianised German, of whatever 
 blend of races he may be, has one quality 
 which may perhaps be racially simple; but 
 which is, at any rate, very plain. Chamber- 
 lain, the German philosopher or historian 
 (I know not which to call him or how to call 
 him either) remarks somewhere that pure- 
 bred races possess fidelity; he instances the 
 negro and the dog — and, I suppose, the Ger- 
 man. Anyhow, it is true that there is a 
 recognisable and real thing which might be 
 called fidelity (or perhaps monotony) which 
 exists in Germans in about the same style 
 
LETTERS TO A GARIBALDIAN in 
 
 as in dogs and niggers. The North Teuton 
 really has in this respect the simplicities of 
 the savage and the lower animals; that he 
 has no reactions. He does not laugh at him- 
 self. He does not want to kick himself. 
 He does not, like most of us, repent — or 
 occasionally even repent of repenting. He 
 does not read his own works and find them 
 much worse or much better than he had ex- 
 pected. He does not feel a faint irrational 
 sense of debauch, after even divine pleas- 
 ures of this life. Watch him at a German 
 restaurant, and you will satisfy yourself that 
 he does not. In short, both in the most 
 scientific and in the most casual sense of the 
 word, he does not know what it is to have 
 a temper. He does not bend and fly back 
 like steel; he sticks out, like wood. In this 
 he differs from any nation I have known, 
 from your nation and mine, from the French, 
 the Spanish, the Scotch, the Welsh and the 
 
112 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 Irish. Bad luck never braces him as it does 
 us. Good luck never frightens him as it 
 does us. It can be seen in what the French 
 call Chauvinism and we call Jingoism. For 
 us it is fireworks ; for him it is daylight. On 
 Mafeking Night, celebrating a small but 
 picturesque success against the Boers, nearly 
 everybody in London came out waving little 
 flags. Nearly everybody in London is now 
 heartily ashamed of it. But it would never 
 occur to the Prussians not to ride their high 
 horses with the freshest insolence for the far- 
 off r victory of Sedan; though on that very 
 anniversary the star of their fate had turned 
 scornful in the sky, and Von Kluck was in 
 retreat from Paris. Above all, the Prus- 
 sian does not feel annoyed, as I do, when 
 foreigners praise his country for all the 
 wrong reasons. The Prussian will allow 
 you to praise him for any reasons, for any 
 length of time, for any eternity of folly; 
 
LETTERS TO A GARIBALDIAN 113 
 
 he is there to be praised. Probably he is 
 proud of this; probably he thinks he has a 
 good digestion, because the poison of praise 
 does not make him sick. He thinks the ab- 
 sence of such doubt, or self-knowledge, 
 makes for composure, grandeur, a colossal 
 calm, a superior race — in short, the whole 
 claim of the Teutons to be the highest spirit- 
 ual product of Nature and Evolution. But 
 as I have noticed a calm unity even more 
 complete, not only in dogs and negroes, but 
 in slugs, slow-worms, mangoldwurzels, moss, 
 mud and bits of stone, I am a sceptic about 
 this test for the marshalling in rank of all 
 the children of God. Now I point this out 
 to you here for a very practical reason. 
 The Prussian will never understand revolu- 
 tions — which are generally reactions. He 
 regards them, not only with dislike, but with 
 a mysterious kind of pity. Throughout his 
 confused popular histories, there runs a 
 
114 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 strange suggestion that civic populations 
 have failed hitherto, and failed because they 
 were always fighting. The population of 
 Berlin does not fight, or can't; and therefore 
 Berlin will succeed where Greece and Rome 
 have failed. Hitherto it is plain enough 
 that Berlin has succeeded in nothing except 
 in bad copies of Greece and Rome ; and Prus- 
 sians would be wiser to discuss the details 
 of the Greek and Roman past, which we can 
 follow, rather than the details of their own 
 future, about which we are naturally not so 
 well informed. Well, every dome they 
 build, every pillar they put upright, every 
 pedestal for epitaph or panel for decora- 
 tion, every type of church, Catholic or Prot- 
 estant, every kind of street, large or small, 
 they have copied from the old Pagan or 
 Catholic cities; and those cities, when they 
 made those things, were boiling with revolu- 
 tions. I remember a German professor say- 
 
LETTERS TO A GARIBALDIAN 115 
 
 ing to me, 'T should have no scruple about 
 extinguishing such republics as Brazil, Ven- 
 ezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua; they are per- 
 petually rioting for one thing or another." 
 I said I supposed he would have had no 
 scruple in extinguishing Athens, Rome, Flor- 
 ence and Paris; for they were always rioting 
 for one thing or another. His reply indi- 
 cated, I thought, that he felt about Csesar 
 or Rienzi very much as the Scotch Presby- 
 terian Minister felt about Christ, when he 
 was reminded of the corn-plucking on the 
 Sabbath, and said, "Weel, I dinna think the 
 better of him." In other words he was quite 
 positive, like all his countrymen, that he 
 could impose a sort of Pax Germanica, which 
 would satisfy all the needs of order and of 
 freedom forever; leaving no need for revo- 
 lutions or reactions. I am myself of a dif- 
 ferent opinion. When I was a child, when 
 the toy-trade of Germany had begun to flood 
 
ii6 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 this countr)^, there was a priggish British 
 couplet, engraven on the minds of govern- 
 esses, which ran — 
 
 What the German children delight to make 
 The English children delight to break. 
 
 I can answer for the delight of the Eng- 
 lish children; a just and godlike delight. I 
 am not so sure about the delight of the Ger- 
 man children, when they were caught in the 
 infernal wheels of the modem civilisation of 
 factories. But, for the present, I am only 
 concerned to say that I do not accept this 
 line of historical division. I do not think 
 history supports the view that those who 
 could break things could not make them. 
 
 This is the least intrusive approach by 
 which I can touch on a topic that must of 
 necessity be a delicate one; yet which may 
 well be a difficulty among Latins like your- 
 self. Against this preposterous Prussian 
 
LETTERS TO A GARIBALDI AN 117 
 
 upstart we have not only to protect our 
 unity; we have even to protect our quarrels. 
 And the deepest of the reactions or revolts 
 of which I have spoken is the quarrel which 
 (very tragically as I think) has for some 
 hundred years cloven the Christian from the 
 Liberal ideal. It would ill become me, in 
 whose country there is neither such clear doc- 
 trine nor such combative democracy, to sup- 
 pose it can be easy for any of you to close 
 up such sacred wounds. There must still 
 be Catholics who feel they can never forgive 
 a Jacobin. There must still be old Repub- 
 licans who feel that they could never endure 
 a priest. And yet there is something, the 
 mere sight of which should lock them both 
 in an instant alliance. They have only to 
 look northward and hold the third thing, 
 which thinks itself superior to either: the 
 enormous turnip-face of ce type la, as the 
 French say, who conceives that he can make 
 
ii8 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 them both like himself and yet remain supe- 
 rior to both. 
 
 I implore you to keep out of the hands 
 of this Fool the quarrel of the great saints 
 and of the great blasphemers. He will do 
 to religion what he will do to art; mix up 
 all the colours on your palette into the col- 
 our of mud : and then say that only the puri- 
 fied eyes of Teutons can see that it is pure 
 white. The other day the Director of 
 Museums in Berlin was said to be setting 
 about the creation of a new kind of Art: 
 German Art. Philosophers and men of 
 science were at the same time directed to 
 meet round the table and found a new 
 Religion: German Religion. How can 
 such people appreciate art; how can they ap- 
 preciate religion — nay, how can they ap- 
 preciate irreligion*? How does one invent 
 a messaged How does one create a Crea- 
 tor? Is it not the plain meaning of the 
 
LETTERS TO A GARIBALDIAN 119 
 
 Gospel that it is good news? And is it not 
 the plain meaning of good news that it must 
 come from outside oneself? Otherwise I 
 could make myself happy this moment, by 
 inventing an enormous victory in Flanders. 
 And I suppose (now I come to think of it) 
 that the Germans do. 
 
 By the fulness of your faith and even the 
 fulness of your despair, you that remember 
 Rome, have earned a right to prevent all our 
 quarrels being quenched in such cold water 
 from the north. But it is not too much to 
 say that neither religion at its worst nor 
 republicanism at its worst ever offered the 
 coarse insult to all mankind that is offered 
 by this new and nakedly universal mon- 
 archy. 
 
 There has always been something common 
 to civilised men, whether they called it be- 
 ing merely a citizen; or being merely a sin- 
 ner. There has always been something 
 
120 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 which your ancestors called V erecundia 
 which is at once humility and dignity. 
 Whatever our faults, we do not do exactly 
 as the Prussians do. We do not bellow day 
 and night to draw attention to our own stern 
 silence. We do not praise ourselves solely 
 because nobody else will praise us. I, for 
 one, say at the end of these letters, as I said 
 at the beginning; that in these international 
 matters I have often differed from my coun- 
 trymen; I have often differed from my- 
 self. I shall not. claim the completeness of 
 this silly creature we discuss. I shall not 
 answer his boasts with boasts; but with 
 blows. 
 
 My front-door is beaten in and broken 
 down suddenly. I see nothing outside, ex- 
 cept a sort of smiling, straw-haired com- 
 mercial traveller with a notebook open, who 
 says, "Excuse me, I am a faultless being, 
 I have persuaded Poland; I can count on my 
 
 I 
 
LETTERS TO A GARIBALDIAN 121 
 
 respectful Allies in Alsace. I am simply 
 loved in Lorraine. Quae reggio in terris 
 , . . What place is there on earth where 
 the name of Prussia is not the signal for 
 hopeful prayers and joyful dances? I am 
 that German who has civilised Belgium; 
 and delicately trimmed the frontiers of 
 Denmark. And I may tell you, with the 
 fulness of conviction, that I have never 
 failed, and shall never fail in anything. 
 Permit me, therefore, to bless your house by 
 the passage of my beautiful boots; that I 
 may burgle the house next door." 
 
 And then something European that is 
 prouder than pride will rise up in me; and I 
 shall answer: — 
 
 "I am that Englishman who has tortured 
 Ireland, who has been tortured by South 
 Africa; who knows all his mistakes, who is 
 heavy with all his sins. And he tells you. 
 Faultless Being, with a truth as deep as his 
 
122 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 
 
 own guilt, and as deathless as his own re- 
 membrance, that you shall not pass this 
 way." 
 
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