We must also remember, however, that the mischievous folly of the men whose counsels tend to inefficiency and impotence is not worse than the baseness of the men who in a spirit of mean and cringing admiration of brute force gloss over, or justify, or even deify, the exhibition of unscrupulous strength. Writings like those of Homer Lea, or of Nietzsche, or even of Professor Treitschke--not to speak of Carlyle--are as objectionable as those of Messrs. Bloch and Angell. Our people need to pay homage to the great efficiency and the intense patriotism of Germany. But they need no less fully to realize that this patriotism has at times been accompanied by callous indifference to the rights of weaker nations, and that this efficiency has at times been exercised in a way that represents a genuine setback to humanity and civilization. Germany’s conduct toward Belgium can be justified only in accordance with a theory which will also justify Napoleon’s conduct toward Spain and his treatment of Prussia and of all Germany during the six years succeeding Jena. I do not see how any man can fail to sympathize with Stein and Schornhorst; with Andreas Hofer, with the Maid of Saragossa, with Koerner and the Tugendbund; and if he does so sympathize, he must extend the same sympathy and admiration to King Albert and the Belgians. Moreover, it is well for Americans always to remember that what has been done to Belgium would, of course, be done to us just as unhesitatingly if the conditions required it. Of course, the lowest depth is reached by the professional pacificists who continue to scream for peace without daring to protest against any concrete wrong committed against peace. These include all of our fellow countrymen who at the present time clamor for peace without explicitly and clearly declaring that the first condition of peace should be the righting of the wrongs of Belgium, reparation to her, and guarantee against the possible repetition of such wrongs at the expense of any well-behaved small civilized power in the future. It may be that peace will come without such reparation and guarantee but if so it will be as emphatically the peace of unrighteousness as was the peace made at Tilsit a hundred and seven years ago.