on
made omnipotent, and bureaucratic interference with every detail of
human life. Sydney Smith's words about unreformed England apply
perfectly to modern Germany. "Of all ingenious instruments of despotism
I most commend a popular assembly where the majority are paid and
hired, and a few bold and able men, by their brave speeches, make
the people believe they are free."

But for our present purpose I must concentrate attention on another
institution which has had an even more direct and practical bearing
on the character of the German people--and this is the enforcement
of military service. This, like every other institution, must be
judged by its effects on the character of those who are subject
to it. The writer of the letter holds that "the only good thing
about the German nation" is the "national service through which
all men pass, and which makes soldiers of all not physically unfit,
and which inculcates patriotism, loyalty, obedience, courage,
discipline, duty." Now, these words, read in connexion with the
description of the German people quoted above, suggest a puzzling
problem. The Germans are cruel, brutally arrogant, deceitful, and
cunning, and "the Prussian will always remain a beast." Yet these
same people have all passed through a discipline "which inculcates
patriotism, loyalty, obedience, courage, discipline, duty." Doth a
fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter? Does
the same system make men patriotic and cruel, loyal and arrogant,
obedient and deceitful, courageous and cunning, dutiful and beastly?

Perhaps it does. I can conceive some of these pairs of qualities
united in a single character. A man might be a zealous patriot,
and yet horribly cruel; loyal to his Sovereign, but arrogant to
his inferiors; obedient to authority, yet deceitful among coequals;
courageous in danger, yet cunning in avoiding it; dutiful according
to his own standard of duty, and yet as "beastly" as the torturers
of Belgium. But a system which produces such a very chequered type
of character is scarcely to be commended.

Now, the writer might reply, "I only said that the military system
_inculcated_ certain virtues. I did not say that it ensured them."
Then it fails. If it has produced only the "vile German race" which
the writer so justly dislikes, unredeemed by any of the virtues
which it "inculcates," then it has nothing to say for itself. It
stands confessed as an unmixed evil.

It is right to exp