_I do not think you Germans realise how steadily you were conquering the world before this war began. Had you given half the energy and intelligence you have spent upon this war to the peaceful conquest of men's minds and spirits, I believe that you would have taken the leadership of the world tranquilly--no man disputing. Your science was five years, your social and economic organisation was a quarter of a century in front of ours.... Never has it so lain in the power of a great people to lead and direct mankind towards the world republic and universal peace. It needed but a certain generosity of the imagination...._ _But your Junkers, your Imperial court, your foolish vicious Princes; what were such dreams to them?... With an envious satisfaction they hurled all the accomplishment of Germany into the fires of war...._ Section 8 _Your boy, as no doubt you know, dreamt constantly of such a world peace as this that I foreshadow; he was more generous than his country. He could envisage war and hostility only as misunderstanding. He thought that a world that could explain itself clearly would surely be at peace. He was scheming always therefore for the perfection and propagation of Esperanto or Ido, or some such universal link. My youngster too was full of a kindred and yet larger dream, the dream of human science, which knows neither king nor country nor race_.... _These boys, these hopes, this war has killed_.... That fragment ended so. Mr. Britling ceased to read for a time. "But has it killed them?" he whispered.... "If you had lived, my dear, you and your England would have talked with a younger Germany--better than I can ever do...." He turned the pages back, and read here and there with an accumulating discontent. Section 9 "Dissertations," said Mr. Britling.