All these explanations, as senseless as they are false, and savoring more of the tone of a criminal court then that of an imperial chancellery, should shock those who admire historic Germany. They are unworthy of so great a nation. Bismarck would never have stooped to such pitiful and transparent deception. The blunt candor of Maximilian Harden, which we have already quoted on page 12, is infinitely preferable and the position of Germany at the bar of the civilized world will improve, when its maladroit Chancellor has the courage and the candor to say, as Harden did, that all this was done because Germany regarded it as for its vital interests and because "we willed it." Unless our boasted civilization is the thinnest veneering of barbarism; unless the law of the world is in fact only the ethics of the rifle and the conscience of the cannon; unless mankind, after uncounted centuries, has made no real advance in political morality beyond that of the cave dweller, then this answer of Germany cannot satisfy the "decent respect to the opinions of mankind." It is the negation of all that civilization stands for. Belgium has been crucified in the face of the world. Its innocence of any offense, until it was attacked, is too clear for argument. Its voluntary immolation to preserve its solemn guarantee of neutrality will "plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against the deep damnation of its taking off." It may be questioned whether, since the fall of Poland, Civilization has been stirred to more profound pity and intense indignation than by this wanton outrage. Pity, radiating to the utmost corners of the world by the "sightless couriers of the air," "Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye That tears shall drown the wind." Was it also, as with Macbeth, a case of "Vaulting ambition which o'erleaps itself And falls on the other"? Time will tell. Had Germany not invaded Belgium, it is an even chance that England would not have intervened, at least at the beginning of the war. Germany could have detached a relatively small part of its army to defend its highly fortified Western frontier, and leaving France to waste its strength on frontal attacks on that almost impregnable line of defense, Germany with the bulk of its army and that of Austria could have made a swift drive at Russia. Is it not possible that that course would have yielded better results than the fiasco, which followed the fruitless drive at Paris? If Germany succeeds, it will claim that "nothing succeeds like success," and to the disciples of Treitschke and Bernhardi this will be a sufficing answer. If it fail, posterity will be at a loss to determine which blundered the worst, the German Foreign Office or its General Staff, its diplomats or its generals. CHAPTER X THE JUDGMENT OF THE WORLD