We are talking about a
new and inhuman morality, which denies altogether the day of obligation.
The Prussians have been told by their literary men that everything depends
upon Mood: and by their politicians that all arrangements dissolve before
"necessity." That is the importance of the German Chancellor's phrase. He
did not allege some special excuse in the case of Belgium, which might
make it seem an exception that proved the rule. He distinctly argued, as
on a principle applicable to other cases, that victory was a necessity
and honour was a scrap of paper. And it is evident that the half-educated
Prussian imagination really cannot get any farther than this. It cannot
see that if everybody's action were entirely incalculable from hour to
hour, it would not only be the end of all promises, but the end of all
projects. In not being able to see that, the Berlin philosopher is really
on a lower mental level than the Arab who respects the salt, or the Brahmin
who preserves the caste. And in this quarrel we have a right to come with
scimitars as well as sabres, with bows as well as rifles, with assegai
and tomahawk and boomerang, because there is in all these at least a seed
of civilisation that these intellectual anarchists would kill.
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