As Bob came to this last passage, he understood why the German soldiers entered the Peace Convention in Berlin and broke it up by force of arms. He felt that the Germans lived in a different world from that in which other nations lived. What to him was a duty, was to them a crime. What to him was the goal of every Christian and humane man, was to the German something to be destroyed root and branch. They lived in different worlds, worshipped a different God. Christianity was not the same thing to them as to us. We had no common ground on which to meet. He understood now why the Hague Conference was a failure. Germany had made it a failure. What other nations longed for, they discarded with scorn. They had an utterly different religion. In spite of whatever militarism there might be in England, the people believed in and worshipped the Prince of Peace. In Germany Christ was crucified, and in his place was set up a WAR GOD before which they fell down and which they adored. All the policy of the Empire was directly controlled by this War God, and they could not understand being governed by any other power. It was all overwhelming, bewildering. This Gospel of the Germans completely revolutionised his whole intellectual outlook. The idea of living at peace with such a people was impossible. One might as well think of living at peace with a mad dog. They had no common morality to which one could appeal. One could not appeal in the Name of the Prince of Peace, because to them the Gospel of Peace was immoral. Then the arrogance of their Creed was revolting. This man Bernhardi, and Treitschke, and Nietzsche, and the rest of them lived, and acted on one assumption. They compressed their thoughts into a syllogism: The people with the highest civilisation and the highest culture should become dominant throughout the world. Germany had the highest civilisation, and boasted the highest culture. Therefore Germany had the right, and not only the right, but the duty to make war in order that Germany might be dominant. Of course she must wait for a favourable opportunity, and when that opportunity came, she must make war regardless of all the misery and bloodshed that it must cause. "The great Elector," said Bernhardi, "laid the foundations of Prussia's power by deliberately incurred wars." In the light of all this Bob called to mind the German Emperor's speech to his soldiers when on their way to the front. "_Remember that the German people are the chosen of God. On me, on me as the German Emperor, the Spirit of God has descended. I am His weapon, his sword, and his vizard. Woe to the disobedient! Death to the cowards and unbelievers!_" It would be laughable if it were not so terrible. Of course the Emperor was sincere and conscientious in all this mountebankism, but he was a menace and a blighting danger all the same.