onalism
will of course appear biased to anyone who has been in the habit of
rating German Culture high in all its bearings, and to whom at the same
time the ideals of peace and liberty appeal. Indeed, such a critic,
gifted with the due modicum of asperity, might well be provoked to call
it all a more or less ingenious diatribe of partisan malice. But it can
be so construed only by those who see the question at issue as a point
of invidious distinction between this German animus on the one hand and
the corresponding frame of mind of the neighboring peoples on the other
hand. There may also appear to the captious to be some air of
deprecation about the characterisation here offered of the past history
of political traffic within the confines of the Fatherland. All of
which, of course, touches neither the veracity of the characterisation
nor the purpose with which so ungrateful a line of analysis and
exposition has been entered upon. It is to be regretted if facts that
may flutter the emotions of one and another among the sensitive and
unreflecting can not be drawn into such an inquiry without having their
cogency discounted beforehand on account of the sentimental value
imputed to them. Of course no offense is intended and no invidious
comparison is aimed at.

Even if the point of it all were an invidious comparison it would
immediately have to be admitted that the net showing in favor of these
others, e.g., the French or the English-speaking peoples, is by no means
so unreservedly to their credit as such a summary statement of the
German case might seem to imply. As bearing on the chances of a peace
contingent upon the temper of the contracting nationalities, it is by no
means a foregone conclusion that such a peace compact would hold
indefinitely even if it depended solely on the pacific animus of these
others that have left the dynastic State behind. These others, in fact,
are also not yet out of the woods. They may not have the same gift of
gratuitous and irresponsible truculence as their German cousins, in the
same alarming degree; but as was said in an earlier passage, they too
are ready to fight on provocation. They are patriotic to a degree;
indeed to such a degree that anything which visibly touches the national
prestige will readily afford a _casus belli_. But it remains true that
the popular temper among them is of the defensive order; perhaps of an
unnecessarily enthusiastic defensive order, but after all in s