in Alsace the
conquerors are forced into the comic posture of annexing the people for
being German and then persecuting them for being French. The French
Teutons who built Rheims must surrender it to the South German Teutons
who have partly built Cologne; and these in turn surrender Cologne to
the North German Teutons, who never built anything, except the wooden
Aunt Sally of old Hindenburg. Every Teuton must fall on his face before
an inferior Teuton; until they all find, in the foul marshes towards the
Baltic, the very lowest of all possible Teutons, and worship him--and
find he is a Slav. So much for Pan-Germanism.

But though Teutonism is indefinable, or at least is by the Teutons
undefined, it is not unreal. A vague but genuine soul does possess all
peoples who boast of Teutonism; and has possessed ourselves, in so far
as we have been touched by that folly. Not a race, but rather a
religion, the thing exists; and in 1870 its sun was at noon. We can most
briefly describe it under three heads.

The victory of the German arms meant before Leipzic, and means now, the
overthrow of a certain idea. That idea is the idea of the Citizen. This
is true in a quite abstract and courteous sense; and is not meant as a
loose charge of oppression. Its truth is quite compatible with a view
that the Germans are better governed than the French. In many ways the
Germans are very well governed. But they might be governed ten thousand
times better than they are, or than anybody ever can be, and still be
as far as ever from governing. The idea of the Citizen is that his
individual human nature shall be constantly and creatively active in
_altering_ the State. The Germans are right in regarding the idea as
dangerously revolutionary. Every Citizen _is_ a revolution. That is, he
destroys, devours and adapts his environment to the extent of his own
thought and conscience. This is what separates the human social effort
from the non-human; the bee creates the honey-comb, but he does not
criticise it. The German ruler really does feed and train the German as
carefully as a gardener waters a flower. But if the flower suddenly
began to water the gardener, he would be much surprised. So in Germany
the people really are educated; but in France the people educates. The
French not only make up the State, but make the State; not only make it,
but remake it. In Germany the ruler is the artist, always painting the
happy German like a portrait; in Franc