id, the professor tells you what you are to
do; he gives you a subject for investigation, he names the books you are
to read, and advises you on what you are to write; you follow his
advice, and produce a thesis, which gains you the degree of Doctor of
Letters. I have seen a good many of these theses, and I am sure this
account is correct. With very rare exceptions they are as dead as
mutton, and much less nourishing. The upshot of our conversation was
that he thought me an incompetent professor, and I thought him an
unprofitable student.

There are many people in England to-day who praise the thoroughness of
the Germans, and their devotion to systematic thought. Has any one ever
taken the trouble to trace the development of the thesis habit, and its
influence on their national life? They theorize everything, and they
believe in their theories. They have solemn theories of the English
character, of the French character, of the nature of war, of the history
of the world. No breath of scepticism dims their complacency, although
events steadily prove their theories wrong. They have courage, and when
they are seeking truth by the process of reasoning, they accept the
conclusions attained by the process, however monstrous these conclusions
may be. They not only accept them, they act upon them, and, as every one
knows, their behaviour in Belgium was dictated to them by their
philosophy.

Thought of this kind is the enemy of the human race. It intoxicates
sluggish minds, to whom thought is not natural. It suppresses all the
gentler instincts of the heart and supplies a basis of orthodoxy for all
the cruelty and treachery in the world. I do not know, none of us knows,
when or how this war will end. But I know that it is worth fighting to
the end, whatever it may cost to all and each of us. We may have peace
with the Germans, the peace of exhaustion or the peace that is only a
breathing space in a long struggle. We can never have peace with the
German idea. It was not the idea of the older German thinkers--of Kant,
or of Goethe, who were good Europeans. Kant said that there is nothing
good in the world except the good will. The modern German doctrine is
that there is nothing good in the world except what tends to the power
and glory of the State. The inventor of this doctrine, it may be
remembered, was the Devil, who offered to the Son of Man the glory of
all the kingdoms of the world, if only He would fall down and worship
hi