Both these principles the instinctive impulsions to which Germany was liable compelled her to violate. She allowed herself to accept opinions of England’s strength, moral and physical, which were pleasant rather than true. She listened eagerly to political philosophers and historians—the most celebrated of whom was, by an ominous coincidence, deaf—who told her that the Empire of England was founded in fraud and perpetuated in feebleness, that it consisted of a mere loose congeries of disloyal peoples who would fly asunder at the first touch of “reality,” that it was rotten with insurgency, senile decay and satiety, and would not and could not fight. Even if these things had been a full statement of the case, they must have been dangerous doctrines. They were defective because the {182} observers were unaware that they were studying different instinctive reactions from their own, and were, therefore, deaf to the notes which might have put them on their guard. At the same time, Germany allowed herself to indulge the equally pleasant expression of her hostility with a freedom apparently unrestrained by any knowledge that such indulgences cannot be enjoyed for nothing. She produced in this country a great deal of alarm, and a great deal of irritation, an effect she no doubt regarded as gratifying, but which made it quite certain that sooner or later England would recognize her implacable enemy, though, inarticulate as usual, she might not say much about it. . . . * * * * * Another feature of Germany’s social type, which has an important bearing on her moral strength, is the relation of the individual citizens to one another. The individual of the wolf pack is of necessity fierce, aggressive, and irritable, otherwise he cannot adequately fulfil his part in the major unit. Apparently it is beyond the power of Nature to confine the ferocity of the wolf solely to the external activities of the pack, as would obviously be in many ways advantageous, and to a certain extent therefore it affects the relations of members of the pack to one another. This is seen very well even in the habits of domesticated dogs, who are apt to show more or less suppressed suspicion and irritability towards one another even when well acquainted, an irritability moreover which is apt to blaze out into hostility on very slight provocation.