For instance, no man of the world believes all he sees in the newspapers, and no journalist believes a quarter of it. We should therefore be quite ready in the ordinary way to take a great deal off the tales of German atrocities; to doubt this story or deny that. But there is one thing that we cannot doubt or deny--the seal and authority of the Emperor. In the imperial proclamation the fact that certain "frightful" things have been done is admitted and justified on the ground of their frightfulness. It was a military necessity to terrify the peaceful populations with something that was not civilized, something that was hardly human. *"Howls When You Hurt Him."* Very well. That is an intelligible policy; and in that sense an intelligible argument. An army endangered by foreigners may do the most frightful things. But then we turn the next page of the Kaiser's public diary, and we find him writing to the President of the United States to complain that the English are using dumdum bullets and violating various regulations of The Hague Conference. I pass for the present the question of whether there is a word of truth in these charges. I am content to gaze rapturously at the blinking eyes of the true, or positive, barbarian. I suppose he would be quite puzzled if we said that violating The Hague Conference was "a military necessity" to us; or that the rules of the conference were only a scrap of paper. He would be quite pained if we said that dumdum bullets "by their very frightfulness" would be very useful to keep conquered Germans in order. Do what he will, he cannot get outside the idea that he, because he is he and not you, is free to break the law and also to appeal to the law. It is said that the Prussian officers play at a game called Kriegspiel, or the war game. But in truth they could not play at any game, for the essence of every game is that the rules are the same on both sides.