ey were
entreated to act towards the Chinese like the Huns
under Attila. _This and the eagerness to crush by
overwhelming power every small nation that
ventures to take sides with the Allies as well as
the proclaiming of rights for submarines and
Zeppelins upon her own authority--these and
similar measures have only been too suited to
nourish the conception that Germany places herself
in the role of the scourge of God._

How this feeling reacts upon political thought is
illustrated by a conversation a German socialist
has had in the summer of 1915 on neutral ground
with a French socialist politician of no jingoish
leanings at all on the possibilities of peace.
Even if Germany declared herself ready to
relinquish Belgium and to return to France every
inch of ground occupied, his countrymen would not
accept peace from her, explained the Frenchman.
And on the question, "Why not?" he replied
passionately: "Because it would be the German
peace; because it would yet leave Germany the all
powerful of Europe; because it would make us
depend upon the whims and tempers of that
conceited military nation."

"But are you going to bleed yourself to death?"
was the next question, and the reply, uttered in a
voice where sadness mingled with determination,
was:

"Yes, rather be ruined!"

This is a specimen of the feeling created by the
present war, and I am afraid the sentiment has not
abated a whit yet. Germans have done a good deal
in attempts to detach the French from the English.
They have told them that they are only the poor
seduced tools of the base and egotistic
Britishers, that Germans did not bear them any
malice, that they rather pitied them and would
fain be ready to come to terms with them. But
declarations of this sort proved only how little
the French mentality was understood this side of
the Vosges. The French nation is too much
impressed by the memory of her great past and the
part played by her in European politics to stand
being pitied and patted like children of tender
age. It will be respected as an equal who acts
with the full knowledge of the state of things and
is too much given to political reflection to
accept willingly any view of the war that visibly
is