The individual Protestant does not dislike the individual Papist, half so much as he dislikes his neighbor in the next pew, who refuses Sunday after Sunday to repeat the service and the creed at the same pace as the others, and hence to "descend into Hell" with the rest of the congregation. The Sioux chief was far more annoyed by his neighbor of the same tribe in the next-door reservation than he was by me. The pugilist scorned "Tug" Wilson, a brother fisticuffs sovereign, but had no feeling against his parish priest. Theological protagonists are notoriously bitter against one another, but we have all found many of them amiable companions ourselves. It is the fellow next door, who wears purple socks, or who parts his hair in the middle, or who wears his coat-sleeves longer than our tailor cuts ours, or who eats his soup with a noise, or who has damp hands, or talks through his nose, who irritates us and makes us wish occasionally for the unlimited club-using freedom of the stone age. It is your first cousin with incurable catarrh, and a slender income who is too much with you, and who spoils your temper, not the anarchist orator who threatens your property and almost your life. "What do these Germans want?" asked a distinguished cabinet minister of me. "They want consideration," I replied, "which is the most difficult thing in the world for the Englishman to offer anybody." "But, you don't mean to say," he continued, "that they really want to cut our throats on account of our bad manners?" I cannot phrase it better, nor can I give a more illuminating illustration of the misunderstanding. That is exactly the reason, and the paramount reason, why nations and why individuals attempt to cut one another's throats. Whatever the fundamental differences may have been that have led to war between nations, the tiny spark that started the explosion has always been some phase of rudeness or bad manners. Counting my school-days, I can remember about a dozen personal conflicts in which I have engaged, with pardonable pleasure. Not one of them was a question of territory, or religious difference, or of racial hatred; indeed, the last one was due to being shouldered in the street when my equanimity was already disturbed by a lingering recovery from a feverish cold. It is, after all, the little differences that count. If politically and socially Germany were a little more sure of herself, if she were not ever omnia tuta timens Dido; and if England were not as ever quite so sure of herself, I believe intercourse between them would be less strained. "The little gnat-like buzzings shrill, The hurdy-gurdies of the street. The common curses of the will-- These wrap the cerements round our feet."