The
beauty of the adventurer is that he is practically invincible. He does
not wait for orders. Under the most perfect police system that Germany
could devise, he would be up and at it again. We are not so numerous as
the Germans, but there are enough and to spare of us to make German
government impossible in any place where we pitch our tents. We are
practised hands at upsetting governments. Our political system is a
training school for rebels. This is what makes our very existence an
offence to the moral instincts of the German people. They are quite
right to want to kill us; the only way to abolish fun and freedom is to
abolish life. But I must not be unjust to them; their forethought
provides for everything, and no doubt they would prescribe authorized
forms of fun for half an hour a week, and would gather together their
subjects in public assembly, under municipal regulations, to perform
approved exercises in freedom.
Mankind lives by ideas; and if an irreconcilable difference in ideas
makes a good war, then this is a good war. The contrast between the two
ideas is profound and far-reaching.
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