"Oui, retenez-le, lecteur, la crainte de M. Brandès dans les circonstances actuelles est que l'Allemagne puisse être humiliée! Le Danemark a été humilié par le _peuple de seigneurs_ qu'est la race allemande. La France aussi, je crois, et la Belgique même; peut-être Brandès le reconnaitra-t-il. Il n'a pas protesté. Il refuse même de s'expliquer a cet égard, alléguant que son silence (assez prolixe) est d'or--d'un or qui ne résisterait pas à la pierre de touche. Mais sa crainte suprême est que les machinateurs du plus grand attentat contre la civilisation, contre l'indépendance des peuples, contre la dignité de l'espèce humaine, les auteurs des épouvantables forfaits dont saignent encore la Belgique et la France n'éprouvent une _humiliation_."[B] Brandès among the neutrals is of the same type as Romain Rolland and Bertrand Russell among the belligerents. All their sympathies are reserved for the criminals. And there are others, who are actually eager to embrace the murderers as their "German friends"! In quite another style is his tribute to Garibaldi when his son Ricciotti--two of whose own sons had fallen fighting for France against the Germans--was himself visiting Paris:-- "Garibaldi was one of those magicians who give their commands to the peoples. These are the true performers of miracles. For they take no account of human powers when the spirit of superhumanity impels them to adventures of rash madness which for them prove to be evidence of supreme sanity. "Those who know, or think they know, talk. But words are not life. Living humanity instinctively gives its devotion to men who rise up, in historic episodes whose law is to us unknown, to accomplish in their heroic simplicity precisely those very feats which 'reason' had never anticipated. To achieve this miracle calls for the man. It requires also the historic moment. The hour struck, and Garibaldi was there. But of that hour he himself was to a marvellous degree the mild yet imperious expression. Obviously inspired with an idea, he refused to see obstacles or to recognise impossibilities. 'I shall go through with it,' and through he went. That seems simple enough to-day. How was it no one was found to do it before him? He went through with it, handing over the crown to royal supplicants, and then hid himself in his island to avoid the annoyance of his glory. "He had given freedom. Let freedom do its work."