The German nature is not only devoid of this instinct, it is roused to fury by the thought of it. Any act, however cruel and barbarous, if only it tends to defeat the enemies of Germany, is a good deed, a brave act, and to be commended. The German general who lays this down is supported by the German professor who adds: ‘The spontaneous and elementary hatred towards England is rooted in the deepest depths of our own being--there, where considerations of reason do not count, where the irrational, the instinct, alone dominates. We hate in the English the hostile principle of our innermost and highest nature. And it is well that we are fully aware of this, because we touch therein the vital meaning of this War.’ Before the end comes, the barbarian will find this hostile principle, and will hate it, in the French, the Italians, the Americans--in the whole fellowship of nations against which he is fighting with savage fury. But, to our satisfaction, he has singled us out first; for, when we hear him, we too are conscious of a spontaneous hatred in the depths of our being; and we see that in this we do ‘touch the vital meaning of this War.’ CHAPTER II THE EVOLUTION OF THE SUBMARINE Many are the fables which the Germans have done their best to pass off for truth among the spectators of the present War; but not one is more wilfully and demonstrably false, than their account of the origin of the submarine. According to the story which they have endeavoured to spread among the unthinking public in neutral countries, the under-sea boat--the arm with which they claim to have revolutionised naval warfare--is the product of German ingenuity and skill. The French, they say, had merely played with the idea; their submarines were costly toys, dangerous only to those who tried to navigate them. The Americans had shown some promise half a century ago; but having since become a pacifist race of dollar-hunters, they had lost interest in war, and their boats would be found useless in practice. As for the British, the day of their naval power was past; they had spent their time and money upon the mania for big ships, and neglected the more scientific vessel, the submarine, which had made the big ships obsolete in a single year’s campaign. The ship of the future, the U-boat, was the national weapon of Germany alone.