itable nor
irritating in the matter of international relations. We have enough to
do, and let others alone. Let us dine one another, criticise one
another in the effort to improve ourselves, praise one another where
the praise serves to establish our own ideals; but let us give up this
forced and awkward courting by banquets, deputations, and conferences.
Let us study the great art of leaving one another alone. This is a
time-hallowed doctrine. The greatest of all satirists and critics of
manners knew this secret of successful intercourse with one another.
One of the characters in the "Frogs" of Aristophanes is made to say:
"Don't come trespassing upon my mind; you have a house of your own."
Propinquity does not necessarily entail intimacy; as the world grows
smaller, more and more people think so, perhaps often enough only to
escape from themselves, a favorite form of elopement these days. Some
men are fed by solitude and starved by too much companionship, and the
same is true of nations. You cannot control others till you have
learned to control yourself, or save another till you yourself are
saved, and most of us had better be about that business.

It is England's business to know just now, and to some extent ours,
how many ships Germany is building and how many men she has in
training to man them; but it is not in the least anybody's business to
question her motives or to attempt to dictate her policy. It is our
business to shut up, and to build ships and to train men according to
our notions of what is necessary for safety in case of an explosion.
We should be about our father's business, not about our brother's
business.

It is shallow thinking and lack of knowledge of the men and women of
stranger countries, and above all that terrible itching to be doing
something, which lead to these futile excursions and this silly talk.

Can anything be more maudlin than to suppose that international
sensitiveness, that commercial rivalries, that tariff discriminations,
that territorial misunderstandings, are to be soothed and smoothed
away, by dissertations upon how much we owe to one another in matters
of culture? Think what we owe to Goethe and Lessing, to Spinoza and
Kant, to Heine and Mozart and Wagner and Beethoven, reiterates the
Englishman; think what we owe to Shakespeare and Milton, to Byron and
Shelley and Scott, to Lister and Newton, answers the German! Who can
go to war with the countrymen of Racine and Molier