“Oh, I don’t know,” I said lamely. “You see we’ve had a lot of practice at governing, and made an awful lot of mistakes, and we’ve learned a little by our past mistakes; I suppose that is one reason. So we know what are the kind of things that people won’t stand. And we let them a good deal alone afterwards, and play cricket and football with them and things of that kind; and we let them vote the same as the rest of us, and--er--well, we don’t treat them any differently from the rest, as far as I can make out--just let them alone to conspire or do as they like--and then if they know they can, they don’t want to. See? And then our Tommies--our soldiers--are very good too; they’re not brought up to be so patriotic as yours--so, of course, it’s less galling: they’d just as soon chum up with the enemy afterwards as not. Yours are brought up to look on him rather as a criminal, aren’t they? Not the officers, of course, but the others. They are patronizingly kind and pitying, and no one likes that, do they? You don’t want conquered people to lose their self-respect. Well, I don’t know, I’m sure----” “Cricket and football,” the lady murmured, “and not too patriotic, and a vote, and let them conspire if they want to, and the soldiers are ‘chummy.’ Ach! We cannot do that. It is a matter of national temperament, I suppose, but it is sad, very sad. Here in five years you pacify your enemy, and in forty years we have not begun to pacify ours: it is a constant fear--a constant terror--one expects every day to hear that war has broken out. And you will not tell us your secret. How do you learn to govern like this? No, it is impossible! It must be, as I said, national temperament.” She sighed and cast her eyes upward and walked away looking troubled. CHAPTER VIII EDUCATION Those ardent military Prussian educationalists into whose hands is given the instruction of the tender princeling usually desire to develop in their pupil characteristics approximating as nearly as possible to those of the most famous Hohenzollern of his race, Frederick the Great; and since, in their estimation, it was the harsh training of his childhood and youth which stimulated into growth the splendid qualities of his manhood, they strive to reproduce as closely as they can--of course in harmony with the more enlightened ideas of the present day--something of the same strenuous atmosphere and stern conditions which surrounded that celebrated monarch as he grew up.