navy as
something more than a Winstonchurchillian luxury!

One may understand at once from this situation, and from her past
history, that Germany has the sound good sense not to be influenced by
the latest school of sentimentalists, who pretend to believe that the
world is a polyglot Sunday-school, with converted millionaires as
teachers therein; or, if not that, a counting-house, where all
questions of honor, race, religion, love, pride, all the questions
which bubble their answers in our blood, are to be settled by weighing
their comparative cost in dollars. We do not realize how new is this
word sentimental. John Wesley, writing of this word "sentimental" as
used in Sterne's "Sentimental Journey," says: "Sentimental, what is
that? It is not English, it is not sense, it conveys no determinate
idea. Yet one fool makes many, and this nonsensical word (who would
believe it) is become a fashionable one."

Germany has been taught by bitter experiences, and harsh masters, that
the ultimate power to command must rest with that authority which, if
necessary, can compel people to obey. They recognize, too, the mawkish
mental foolery of any plan of living together which ignores the part
which physical force must necessarily play in any political or social
life which is complete. They agree, too, as does every intelligent man
in Christendom, that the appeal to reason is far preferable to an
appeal to war. But, pray, what is to be done where there is no reason
to appeal to? Are reasonable men to strip themselves of all armor, and
suffer unreason to prevail?

An army or a fleet is no more an incitement to war among reasonable
men, than a policeman is an incentive to burglary or homicide. An army
is not a contemptuous protest against Christianity; it is a sad
commentary on Christianity's failure and inefficiency. An army and a
fleet are merely a reasonable precaution which every nation must take,
while awaiting the conversion of mankind from the predatory to the
polite.

As yet the Germans have not been overtaken by the tepid wave of
feminism, which for the moment is bathing the prosperity-softened
culture of America and England. It is a harsh remedy, but both America
and England would gain something of virility if they were shot over.
We are all apt enough to become womanish, agitated, or acidulous,
according to age and condition, when we are reaping in security the
fields cleared, enriched, and planted by a hardy ancestry