The myriads of Prussian germs, gases, and gangrenes released into the air and for the past year obsessing everything, revived my quiescent creation. I was moved to vomit Kreisler forth. It is one big germ more. May the flames of Louvain help to illuminate (and illustrate) my hapless protagonist! His misdemeanours too, which might appear too harshly real at ordinary times, have, just now, too obvious confirmations to be questioned. Germany’s large leaden brain booms away in the centre of Europe. Her brain-waves and titanic orchestrations have broken round us for too long not to have had their effect. As we never think ourselves, except a stray Irishman or American, we should long ago have been swamped had it not been for the sea. The habits and vitality of the seaman’s life and this vigorous element have protected us intellectually as the blue water has politically. In Europe Nietzsche’s gospel of desperation, the beyond-law-man, etc., has deeply influenced the Paris apache, the Italian Futurist _littérateur_, the Russian revolutionary. Nietzsche’s books are full of seductions and sugar-plums. They have made “aristocrats” of people who would otherwise have been only mild snobs or meddlesome prigs; as much as, if not more than, other writings, they have made “expropriators” of what would otherwise merely have been Arsène Lupins: and they have made an Over-man of every vulgarly energetic grocer in Europe. The commercial and military success of Prussia has deeply influenced the French, as it is gradually winning the imagination of the English. The fascination of material power is, for the irreligious modern man, almost impossible to resist. There is much to be said for this eruption of greedy, fleshy, frantic strength in the midst of discouraged delicacies. Germany has its mission and its beauty. We will hope that the English may benefit by this power and passion, without being unnecessarily grateful for a gift that has been _bought_ with best English blood, and which is not as important or unique as the great English gift bestowed centuries ago. As to the Prophet of War, the tone of Nietzsche’s books should have discredited his philosophy. The modern Prussian advocate of the Aristocratic and Tyrannic took _everybody_ into his confidence. Then he would coquet: he gave special prizes. _Everybody_ couldn’t be a follower of his! No: only the _minority_: that is the minority who read his books, which has steadily grown till it comprises certainly (or would were it collected together) the ungainliest and strangest aristocratic caste any world could hope to see!