at.

_Portia_. The quality of mercy is not strained.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath; it is twice bless'd;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown.
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway,
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself,
And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That in the course of justice none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy,
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy.

That speech rises above the strife of nations; it belongs to humanity.
But an Englishman wrote it; and the author, we may be sure, if he ever
met with the doctrine that a man who is called on to help his own people
is in duty bound to set aside the claims of humanity, and to stop his
ears to the call of mercy, knew that the doctrine is an invention of the
devil, stupid and angry, as the devil commonly is. There are hundreds of
thousands of Englishmen who, though they could not have written the
speech, yet know all that it teaches, and act on the knowledge. It is
part of the creed of the Navy. We can speak more confidently than we
could have spoken three or four years ago. We know that not the
extremest pressure of circumstance could ever bring the people of
England to forget all the natural pieties, to permit official duties to
annul private charities, and to join in the frenzied dance of hate and
lust which leads to the mouth of the pit.

Yet Germany, where all this seems to have happened, was not very long
ago a country where it was easy to find humanity, and simplicity, and
kindness. It was a country of quiet industry and content, the home of
fairy stories, which Shakespeare himself would have loved. The Germans
of our day have made a religion of war and terror, and have used
commerce as a means for the treacherous destruction of the independence
and freedom of others. They were not always like that. In the fifteenth
century they spread the art of printing through Europe, for the service
of man, by the method of peaceful penetration. My friend Mr. John
Sampson recently expressed to