It is these which explain their devotion and self-sacrifice, it is these which explain the Teutonic legions marching to their doom singing their hymns of love as well as their hymns of hatred. It is these which explain the two million volunteers which in August, 1914, went to swell the huge German conscript armies. It is the obsession of that mystical German creed which explains the epic achievements of the German offensive and the even more astounding achievements of the German defensive. We may continue to denounce the crimes of Germany and the atrocities of the German soldiery—and I have personally denounced them until my readers must have got sick of my denunciations. But there is nothing particularly mysterious in crimes and atrocities, and crimes and atrocities alone do not help to explain the German soul. Crimes and atrocities do not make us understand how even to-day the German hosts are still able to challenge a whole world in arms. Let us, then, take in the vital fact that after three years those German spiritual forces, those perverted German ideals, remain the most formidable obstacle in our path. We may continue to destroy the German armies by the slow process of attrition, and we may continue to sacrifice the flower of our youth until the process is completed. We may trust to our superiority in money-power and in man-power, but unless we also break the moral power of German ideals, unless we exorcise the spell which possesses the German mind, unless we triumph in the spiritual contest as well as in the battle of tanks and howitzers, unless we overthrow the idols which successive generations of great teachers and preachers have imposed on a susceptible, receptive, and docile people, there will be no early settlement, nor, however long belated, can there ever be a lasting peace.