But it is still the
abstract principle of Professor Harnack which interests me most; and in
following it I have the same complexity of inquiry, but the same simplicity
of result. Comparing the Professor's concern about "Teutonism" with his
unconcern about Belgium, I can only reach the following result: "A man
need not keep a promise he has made. But a man must keep a promise he has
not made." There certainly was a treaty binding Britain to Belgium; if
it was only a scrap of paper. If there was any treaty binding Britain to
Teutonism it is, to say the least of it, a lost scrap of paper; almost
what one would call a scrap of waste-paper. Here again the pedants under
consideration exhibit the illogical perversity that makes the brain reel.
There is obligation and there is no obligation: sometimes it appears that
Germany and England must keep faith with each other; sometimes that Germany
need not keep faith with anybody and anything; sometimes that we alone
among European peoples are almost entitled to be Germans; sometimes that
besides us, Russians and Frenchmen almost rise to a Germanic loveliness of
character. But through all there is, hazy but not hypocritical, this sense
of some common Teutonism.
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