d
grace. They do not take a magnanimous and frank satisfaction or
pleasure in righting a wrong.

You would not believe how lacking their character is in the
capacity for penitence, for atonement. We will never see them
sorry for any of their present enormities. The still, small
voice in them has not been allowed to develop. Their notion of
ethics is so different that it is inadmissible from our
standards.

To be sensitive, grieve, suffer morally, is apart from their
normal consciousness. For all this tender and beautiful side of
human nature they substitute only the discomforted feelings of
defeat. No matter how this present conflict ends, he who looks
for any sympathetic actions or noble regrets from them will be
dumfounded....

* * * * *

_England, November, 1914_.

Hurrah! I am at last, after disappointments and frettings, under
way for Flanders. Lo, I am become, as it were, an Englishman!
The British now see the full peril and are taking almost any
kind of men, and I'm going along. I suppose it is because I am
so keyed up that I feel so well. I'm surprised at myself. I
guess I must have, after all, a little good Anglo-Saxon grit in
me.

I am trying to write this scrawl to you on a round milk
container in a camp near London. We are not permitted to tell
where....

As I was on the point of saying in my last letter, Jesus is
never a watchword in Germany. The Nazarene meekness makes small
appeal there. All is Gott. The Teuton regards Christ as too much
of a weakling. Had He an army? Could He shoot, as all Germans
can? He would not fight and therefore was properly destroyed.
If His foolish ideas were followed, the weak would eventually
rule the earth whereas, to the German mind, the strong should
manifestly rule the earth. The strongest are the fittest, and
the fittest should alone survive.

To the Goth the Christian religion and philosophy are baneful,
baleful. As the result of their feeble policy was not Christ
followed--the Germans claim--by the Dark Ages when mankind was
obsessed by His superstitious worship? Lifting men out of this
morass, the proper practical, scientific and warlike forces came
at length into play and we have the magnificent modern regime
whose basis is armed strength.

Hence--it is argue