sely the plaint of modern Germany. We seek, they say, to do
merely what England and France--it were indiscreet to mention
Austria--did in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They were
vigorous peoples with an impulse to expand and to extend their
civilisation over backward lands. They appealed solely to the right of
the sword, and all the Christian authorities in Europe--the bishops of
William and of Anne, the bishops of Louis XIV, the bishops of Peter the
Great--had not a single syllable to say against the right of the sword.
The various branches of the Christian Church were at that time
singularly unanimous in accommodating their principles to imperialist
and aggressive warfare. Now that you have obtained all that you
need--the aggrieved Teuton says--now that I in turn would expand and
colonise, you discover that this imperialist aggression is supremely
opposed to Christian principles.

On some such meditations, in part, the German bases his conviction of
the hypocrisy and perfidy of the English character. He is, of course,
entirely wrong. A real change has taken place in the moral sentiment of
this country; a change so real that when, in South Africa, the nation
entered upon a war which many regarded as aggressive and merely
acquisitive, there was a very widespread revolt. The cynic might
genially observe that it is not difficult to retire from evil-doing and
cultivate lofty principles when your fortune has been made, but it is
important to realise this change and understand its significance. There
is, no doubt, a sound human element in the cynic's observation. It _is_
easier to recognise moral principle when the period of temptation is
over. Every thoughtful and humane Englishman will make allowance for the
less fortunate position of Germany, and not foolishly pride himself on
his own superiority of character. The fact remains, however, that there
has been a real moral improvement in England and France, and it would
now be impossible for those nations to enter upon the aggressive and
nakedly ambitious wars which they were accustomed to undertake before
the nineteenth century. We have a genuine abhorrence of the "lust for
land" which has impelled Germany to plunge Europe into war. But until a
century or two ago that lust for land was considered a legitimate
appetite in Europe, and the clergy crowded with the people to greet the
warriors who came home with the news that they had added, by the sword,
one more pro