of experience and the sense of proportion which they display. It would
not be fair to take one writer as conclusive; but as a _specimen_ of the
kind of thing we may quote the following extract (given by Mr. H.A.L.
Fisher, the Oxford historian, in his able brochure _The War: Its Causes
and Issues_) from the writings of Bronsart von Schellendorf: "Do not let
us forget the civilizing task which the decrees of Providence have
assigned to us. Just as Prussia was destined to be the nucleus of
Germany, so the regenerated Germany shall be the nucleus of a future
Empire of the West. And in order that no one shall be left in doubt, we
proclaim from henceforth that our continental nation has a right to the
sea, not only to the North Sea, but to the Mediterranean and Atlantic.
Hence we intend to absorb one after another all the provinces which
neighbour on Prussia. We will successively annex Denmark, Holland,
Belgium, Northern Switzerland, then Trieste and Venice, finally Northern
France from the Sambre to the Loire. This programme we fearlessly
pronounce. It is not the work of a madman. The Empire we intend to found
will be no Utopia. We have ready to our hands the means of founding it,
and no coalition in the world can stop us."

Bronsart von Schellendorf (1832-91) was one of the Prussian Generals who
negotiated the surrender of the French at Sedan. He became Chief of the
Staff, and War Minister (1883-9), and wrote on Tactics, etc. His above
utterance, therefore, cannot be neglected as that of an irresponsible
person.

There is, as I have already had occasion to say, a certain easygoing
absurdity in the habit we commonly have of talking of nations
--"Germany," "France," "England," and so forth--as if they were
simple and plainly responsible persons or individuals, when all the time
we know perfectly well that they are more like huge whirlpools of
humanity caused by the impact and collision of countless and often
opposing currents flowing together from various directions. Yet there is
this point of incontestable similarity between nations and individual
persons, that both occasionally go mad! If Germany was afflicted by a
kind of madness or divine _dementia_ previous to the present war,
Britain can by no means throw that in her teeth, for Britain certainly
went mad over Mafeking; and it was sheer madness that in 1870 threw the
people of France and Napoleon III--utterly unready for war as they
were, and over a most trifling quar