Agreeable Germany!--whose Kaiser, if his fleet had been larger, would have taken us by the scruff of the neck. “Then Thou, Almighty One, send Thy lightnings! Let dwellings and cottages become ashes in the heat of fire. Let the people in hordes burn and drown with wife and child. May their seed be trampled under our feet; May we kill great and small in the lust of joy. May we plunge our daggers into their bodies, May Poland reek in the glow of fire and ashes.” That is another verse of Germany’s hymn, hate for Poland; that is her way of taking people by the scruff of the neck; and that is what Senator Walsh’s resolution of sympathy with Ireland, Germany’s contemplated Heligoland, implies for the United States, if Germany’s deferred day should come. Chapter XVIII: The Will to Friendship--or the Will to Hate? Nations do not like each other. No plainer fact stares at us from the pages of history since the beginning. Are we to sit down under this forever? Why should we make no attempt to change this for the better in the pages of history that are yet to be written? Other evils have been made better. In this very war, the outcry against Germany has been because she deliberately brought back into war the cruelties and the horrors of more barbarous times, and with cold calculations of premeditated science made these horrors worse. Our recoil from this deed of hers and what it has brought upon the world is seen in our wish for a League of Nations. The thought of any more battles, tenches, submarines, air-raids, starvation, misery, is so unbearable to our bruised and stricken minds, that we have put it into words whose import is, Let us have no more of this! We have at least put it into words. That such words, that such a League, can now grow into something more than words, is the hope of many, the doubt of many, the belief of a few. It is the belief of Mr. Wilson; of Mr. Taft; Lord Bryce; and of Lord Grey, a quiet Englishman, whose statesmanship during those last ten murky days of July, 1914, when he strove to avert the dreadful years that followed, will shine bright and permanent. We must not be chilled by the doubters. Especially is the scheme doubted in dear old Europe. Dear old Europe is so old; we are so young; we cause her to smile. Yet it is not such a contemptible thing to be young and innocent. Only, your innocence, while it makes you an idealist, must not blind you to the facts. Your idea must not rest upon sand. It must have a little rock to start with. The nearest rock in sight is friendship between England and ourselves.