s
that wear us down, and produce a sub-acid dislike between nations as
between individuals. It is these that prepare the ground for a fine
crop of misunderstandings.

But are we not to know our neighbors the English, the Germans, the
French? I for one consider that not to know German and Germany, for
example, is nowadays not to be fully educated. Most of us, however,
have had our nerves unstrung by the speeding-up process that has gone
on all over the world of late. We have lost somewhat the power to know
people and to let them alone at the same time. Goethe, one of the
coolest and wisest of men, maintains: "Certain defects are necessary
for the existence of individuality. One would not be pleased if old
friends were to lay aside certain peculiarities."

We should at least give every man as fair a chance to receive our good
opinion as we give a picture. We should put him in a good light before
we criticise him. We should take time enough to do that to other
nations, as well as to individuals. I have always had much sympathy
for a certain Roman general. He was blind, and a painter who painted
him with two large eyes, he rebuked; another painter, who painted him
in profile, he rewarded.

It is, after all, something of an art to know people, so that the
knowledge is serviceable, so that you can depict them to yourself and
to others, not as they are as opposed to you, but as they are as a
complement and help to you.

"No human quality is so well wove
In warp and woof, but there's some flaw in it;
I've known a brave man fly a shepherd's cur,
A wise man so demean himself, drivelling idiocy
Had wellnigh been ashamed on't. For your crafty,
Your worldly-wise man, he, above the rest,
Weaves his own snares so fine, he's often caught in them."

He who does not make allowances for weaknesses and differences in his
study of human affairs is still in the infant class. It is a grave
danger to every state that critics, smart or shallow, with their tu
quoque weapons, their silly ridicule, their emphasis upon differences
as though they were disasters, their constant failure to recognize the
value of certain weaknesses, their stupidity in not painting great men
who happen to be blind, in profile, and their harping upon the flaws,
and their neglect of the fine texture of human qualities that are
strange to them, that these critics are not muzzled, or, if that is
impossible, disregarded.

They make it appear that amicable relations