The
insuperable barrier that divides England from Germany has grown out of
circumstance and habit and thought. For many hundreds of years the
German peoples have stood to arms in their own defence against the
encroachments of successive empires; and modern Germany learned the
doctrine of the omnipotence of force by prolonged suffering at the hands
of the greatest master of that immoral school--the Emperor Napoleon. No
German can understand the attitude of disinterested patronage which the
English mind quite naturally assumes when it is brought into contact
with foreigners. The best example of this superiority of attitude is to
be seen in the people who are called pacifists. They are a peculiarly
English type, and they are the most arrogant of all the English. The
idea that they should ever have to fight for their lives is to them
supremely absurd. There must be some mistake, they think, which can be
easily remedied once it is pointed out. Their title to existence is so
clear to themselves that they are convinced it will be universally
recognized; it must not be made a matter of international conflict.
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