Their wisdom is
all cunning. I have had German friends, two or three, in the course of
my life, but none of them ever understood a word that I said if I tried
to say what I thought. You could talk to them about food, and they
responded easily. It was all very restful and pleasant, like talking to
an intelligent dog.
If each of the allied nations were devoted to the creed of nationalism,
the alliance could not endure. We depend for our strength on what we
hold in common. The weakness of this wider creed is that it makes no
such immediate and strong appeal to the natural instincts as is made by
the mother-country. It demands the habitual exercise of reason and
imagination. Further, seeing that we are infinitely less tame and less
docile than the Germans, we depend for our strength on informing and
convincing our people, and on obtaining agreement among them. Questions
which in Germany are discussed only in the gloomy Berlin head-quarters
of the General Staff are discussed here in the newspapers. In the press,
even under the censorship, we think aloud. It records our differences
and debates our policy.
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