ity as war-lord, and in his
insistent stiffening of Germany's martial backbone.

When shall we all recover from a certain international sickliness that
keeps us all feverish? The continual talk and writing about
international friendships, being of the same family, or the same race,
the cousin propagandism in short, is irritating, not helpful. I do not
go to Germany to discover how American is Germany, nor to England to
discover how American is England; but to Germany to discover how
German is Germany, to England to see how English is England. I much
prefer Americans to either Germans or Englishmen, and they prefer
Germans or Englishmen, as the case may be, to Americans. What spurious
and milksoppy puppets we should be if it were not so. So long as there
are praters going about insisting that Germany, with a flaxen pig-tail
down her back, and England, in pumps instead of boots, and a poodle
instead of a bulldog, shall sit forever in the moonlight hand in hand;
or that America shall become a dandy, shave the chin-whisker, wear a
Latin Quarter butterfly tie of red, white, and blue, and thrum a banjo
to a little brown lady with oblique eyes and a fan, all day long; just
so long will the bulldog snarl, the flaxen-haired maiden look sulky,
the chin-whisker become stiffer and more provocative, and the
fluttering fan seem to threaten blows.

We have been surfeited with peace talk till we are all irritable. One
hundredth part of an ounce of the same quality of peace powders that
we are using internationally would, if prescribed to a happy family in
this or any other land, lead to dissensions, disobedience, domestic
disaster, and divorce. Mr. Carnegie will have lived long enough to see
more wars and international disturbances, and more discontent born of
superficial reading, than any man in history who was at the same time
so closely connected with their origin. Perhaps it were better after
all if our millionaires were educated!

The peace party need war just as the atheists need God, otherwise they
have nothing to deny, nothing to attack. Peace is a negative thing
that no one really wants, certainly not the kind of peace of which
there is so much talking to-day, which is a kind of castrated
patriotism. Peace is not that. Peace can never be born of such
impotency. When German statesmen declare roundly that they will not
discuss the question of disarmament, they are merely saying that they
will not be traitors to their country.