s_. Then a sacred
thrill (_heiliger Schauer_) of deep understanding will come over your
heart." For the German sportsman "takes more pleasure in the life that
surrounds him and which he _protects_, than in the shot which only the
last hot virile craving (_Mannesgier_) wrings from him, and which he
fires only when he knows that he will _kill_, _painlessly kill_. For
this is the root principle of German sportsmanship: 'God grant me one
day such an end as I strive to bestow upon the game.' ... And if, by
mischance, the German sportsman wounds without killing a head of game,
he suffers with it, and does not sleep or rest till he has put it out
of its misery." If this be not very nauseous cant, where shall we seek
for it?

Another curious German characteristic is the idea that, however
truculent and menacing a writer's expressions may be, other people do
him and his country a wicked injustice if they take him at his word. A
good instance of this occurs in "Ein starkes Volk--Ein starkes Heer,"
by Kurd v. Strantz, published in 1914, shortly before the war. This
writer quotes (or rather misquotes) with enthusiasm from Goethe:--

Du musst steigen und gewinnen,
Du musst siegend triumphieren
Oder deinend unterliegen,
Amboss oder Hammer sein.[5]

Next he proceeds to quote from Felix Dahn:--

Seitdem ist's freudig Germanenrecht
Mit dem Hammer Land zu erwerben.
Wir sind von des Hammergottes Geschlecht,
Und wollen sein Weltreich erben.[6]

Then, on the same page, only four lines lower down, he remarks
plaintively:--"Foreign, and especially French, diplomacy is now
industriously spreading the calumny that the German Government and the
German people are given to rattling the sabre, and that we want to use
for aggressive ends the increased armament which has been forced upon
us." Is it mere hostile prejudice to hold that his own poetical
selections give a certain colour to the "calumny"?

Most of the German attacks on England will be found, in the last
analysis, to rest on this quaint habit of mind--the habit of assuming
that, no matter how hostile and threatening Germany's words and deeds
might be, we had no right to do her the injustice of supposing that
she meant anything by them. We ought to have known that she was merely
"dissembling her love."

Some readers may be disposed to regret that the great Germanic
trinity, Nietzsche-Treitschke-Bernhardi, contribute so largely to my
anthology. In