Garonne--and they would still be singing sadly about how fast and
true stands the watch on the Rhine and what a shame it would be if any
one took their own little river away from them. That is what I mean by
not being reciprocal; and you will find it in all that they do, as in
all that is done by savages.

*"Laughs When He Hurts You."*

Here again it is very necessary to avoid confusing this soul of the
savage with mere savagery in the sense of brutality or butchery, in
which the Greeks, the French, and all the most civilized nations have
indulged in hours of abnormal panic or revenge. Accusations of cruelty
are generally mutual. But it is the point about the Prussian that with
him nothing is mutual. The definition of the true savage does not
concern itself even with how much more he hurts strangers or captives
than do the other tribes of men. The definition of the true savage is
that he laughs when he hurts you and howls when you hurt him. This
extraordinary inequality in the mind is in every act and word that comes
from Berlin.

For instance, no man of the world believes all he sees in the
newspapers, and no journalist believes a quarter of it. We should
therefore be quite ready in the ordinary way to take a great deal off
the tales of German atrocities; to doubt this story or deny that. But
there is one thing that we cannot doubt or deny--the seal and authority
of the Emperor. In the imperial proclamation the fact that certain
"frightful" things have been done is admitted and justified on the
ground of their frightfulness. It was a military necessity to terrify
the peaceful populations with something that was not civilized,
something that was hardly human.

*"Howls When You Hurt Him."*

Very well. That is an intelligible policy; and in that sense an
intelligible argument. An army endangered by foreigners may do the most
frightful things. But then we turn the next page of the Kaiser's public
diary, and we find him writing to the President of the United States to
complain that the English are using dumdum bullets and violating various
regulations of The Hague Conference. I pass for the present the question
of whether there is a word of truth in these charges. I am content to
gaze rapturously at the blinking eyes of the true, or positive,
barbarian. I suppose he would be quite puzzled if we said that violating
The Hague Conference was "a military necessity" to us; or that the rules
of the conference were only