Those and other little sums in equation were almost always capped by a conclusive reference to the impending civil war in Ireland and England, the danger of risings in Egypt and India, and the constant trouble with the suffragettes. Whenever this topic came up for discussion I was invariably a silent listener, so conversant were the debaters with all the aspects and bearings of the Ulster movement, and so eager were they to display their knowledge. I learned, for instance, that numerous German agents, journalists, and one diplomatist well known to social London had studied the question on the spot, and entertained no doubt that a fratricidal struggle was about to begin. I received the condolence of my eminent friends on the impending break-up of old England, and I heard the reiterated dogma that with her hands thus full she would steer clear of the conflict between the groups of Continental Great Powers. I was comforted, however, by the assurance that at the close of hostilities Great Britain might make her moderating influence felt to good purpose and resume the praiseworthy efforts to the failure of which the coming catastrophe was to be attributed. In all these close calculations the decisive element of national character was left out, with the consequences we see. Despite their powers of observation and analysis, the Germans, even those who are gifted and experienced, are devoid of some indefinable inner sense without which they must ever lack true insight into the soul-stuff, the dormant qualities of the people whose wrath they have wantonly aroused. To the realm of British thought and feeling they, with their warped psychological equipment, find no access. Its secondary characteristics they grasp with their noted thoroughness and seek to practise upon with their traditional cynicism. But the deeper springs of our race-character, its clear-souled faith, its masculine vigour, and its vast reserve of elemental force, lie beyond their narrow range of vision. To the sentient and perceptive powers even of the most acute German observer, the workings of the British soul, its inherited nobilities, its deep moral feeling, are inaccessible. And here, more than in any other branch of the “intelligence department,” a little knowledge is indeed a dangerous thing.