It was a military necessity to terrify
the peaceful populations with something that was not civilised, something
that was hardly human. Very well. That is an intelligible policy: and in
that sense an intelligible argument. An army endangered by foreigners
may do the most frightful things. But then we turn the next page of the
Kaiser's public diary, and we find him writing to the President of the
United States, to complain that the English are using dum-dum bullets
and violating various regulations of the Hague Conference. I pass for
the present the question of whether there is a word of truth in these
charges. I am content to gaze rapturously at the blinking eyes of the True,
or Positive, Barbarian. I suppose he would be quite puzzled if we said that
violating the Hague Conference was "a military necessity" to us; or that
the rules of the Conference were only a scrap of paper. He would be quite
pained if we said that dum-dum bullets, "by their very frightfulness,"
would be very useful to keep conquered Germans in order. Do what he will,
he cannot get outside the idea that he, because he is he and not you, is
free to break the law; and also to appeal to the law.
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