at they are not
responsible for the war in any way, and so forth. Is it simply that our
condemnation would hurt their feelings? This hardly agrees with certain
other ideas which we hold as to the belligerents.

There is something beyond this order of motive at the bottom of the
immense respect which all the combatants alike are paying to American
opinion. It happened to the writer recently to meet a considerable
number of Belgian refugees from Brussels, all of them full of stories
(which I must admit were second or third or three-hundredth hand) of
German barbarity and ferocity. Yet all were obliged to admit that German
behavior in Brussels had on the whole been very good. But that, they
explained, was "merely because the American Consul put his foot down."
Yet one is not aware that President Wilson had authorized the American
Consul so much as to hint at the possible military intervention of
America in this war. Nevertheless there can be no doubt that these
"Huns," so little susceptible in our view for the most part to moral
considerations, were greatly influenced by the opinion of America; and
we know also that the other belligerents have shown the same respect for
the attitude of the United States.

I think we have here what so frequently happens in the development of
the attitude of men toward large general questions: the intuitive
recognition of a truth which those who recognize it are quite unable to
put into words. It is a self-protective instinct, a movement that is
made without its being necessary to think it out. (In the way that the
untaught person is able instantly to detect the false note in a tune
without knowing that such things as notes or crotchets and quavers
exist.)

It is quite true that the Germans feared the bad opinion of the world
because the bad opinion of the world may be translated into an element
of resistance to the very ends which it is the object of the war to
achieve for Germany.

Those ends include the extension of German influence, material and
moral, of German commerce and culture. But a world very hostile to
Germany might quite conceivably check both. We say, rightly enough,
probably, that pride of place and power had its part--many declare the
prominent part--in the motives that led Germany into this war. But it is
quite conceivable that a universal revulsion of feeling against a power
like Germany might neutralize the influence she would gain in the world
by a mere extension of