surely was not German." Information less laughable about the
morals taught in the German schools I forbear to quote.

During forty years Germany sat within her wall, learning and repeating
Prussian incantations. It recalls those savage rites where the
participants, by shouting and by concerted rhythmic movements, work
themselves into a frothing state. This has befallen Germany. Within
her wall of moral isolation her sight has grown distorted, her sense
of proportion is lost; a set of reeling delusions possesses her--her
own greatness, her mission of _Kultur_, her contempt for the rest of
mankind, her grievance that mankind is in league to cramp and suppress
her.

These delusions have been attended by their proper Nemesis: Germany
has misunderstood us all--everybody and everything outside her wall.

Like the bewitched dwarfs in certain old magic tales, whose talk
reveals their evil without their knowing it, Germans constantly utter
words of the most naif and grotesque self-betrayal--as when the German
ambassador was being escorted away from England and was urged by his
escort not to be so downcast; the war being no fault of his. He
answered in sincere sadness:

"Oh, you don't realize! My future is broken. I was sent to watch
England and tell my Emperor the right moment for him to strike, when
England's internal disturbances would make it impossible for her to
fight us. I told him the moment had come."

Or again, when a German in Brussels said to an American:

"We were sincerely sorry for Belgium; but we feel it is better for
that country to suffer, even to disappear, than for our Empire, so
much larger and more important, to be torpedoed by our treacherous
enemies."

Or again, when Doctor Dernburg shows us why Germany had to murder
eleven hundred passengers:

"It has been the custom heretofore to take off passengers and crew....
But a submarine ... cannot do it. The submarine is a frail craft and
may easily be rammed, and a speedy ship is capable of running away
from it."

No more than the dwarf has Germany any conception what such candid
words reveal of herself to ears outside her Teutonic wall--that she
has walked back to the morality of the Stone Age and made ancient
warfare more hideous through the devices of modern science.

Thus her Nemesis is to misunderstand the world. She blundered as to
what Belgium would do, what France would do, what Russia would do; and
she most desperately blundered as to what