mere
barbarities, it is true, the Turco and the Sikh would have very good
reply to the superior Teuton. The general and just reason for not using
non-European tribes against Europeans is that given by Chatham against
the use of the red Indian--that such allies might do very diabolical
things. But the poor Turco might not unreasonably ask, after a week-end
in Belgium, what more diabolical things he could do than the highly
cultured Germans were doing themselves.

Nevertheless, as I say, the justification of any extra-European aid goes
deeper than by any such details. It rests upon the fact that even other
civilizations, even much lower civilizations, even remote and repulsive
civilizations, depend as much as our own on this primary principle on
which the supermorality of Potsdam declares open war. Even savages
promise things, and respect those who keep their promises. Even
Orientals write things down; and though they write them from right to
left, they know the importance of a scrap of paper. Many merchants will
tell you that the word of the sinister and almost unhuman Chinaman is
often as good as his bond; and it was amid palm trees and Syrian
pavilions that the great utterance opened the tabernacle to him that
sweareth to his hurt and changeth not. There is doubtless a dense
labyrinth of duplicity in the East; and perhaps more guile in the
individual Asiatic than in the individual German. But we are not talking
of the violations of human morality in various parts of the world.

*A Fight Against Anarchy.*

We are talking about a new inhuman morality which denies altogether the
day of obligation. The Prussians have been told by their literary men
that everything depends upon "mood," and by their politicians that all
arrangements dissolve before "necessity." That is the importance of the
German Chancellor's phrase. He did not allege some special excuse in the
case of Belgium, which might make it seem an exception that proved the
rule. He distinctly argued, as on a principle applicable to other cases,
that victory was a necessity and honor was a scrap of paper. And it is
evident that the half-educated Prussian imagination really cannot get
any further than this. It cannot see that if everybody's action were
entirely incalculable from hour to hour, it would not only be the end of
all promises but the end of all projects.

In not being able to see that, the Berlin philosopher is really on a
lower mental level than the