When Maubeuge fell I heard Germans of all classes boast of how their soldiers struck the British who offered to shake hands after they surrendered to the Germans. Nearly two years later, during the Battle of the Somme, some Berlin papers copied from London papers a report of how British soldiers presented arms to the group of prisoners who had stubbornly defended Ovillers. I called the attention of several German acquaintances to this as an evidence of Anglo-Saxon sporting spirit, but I got practically the same response in every case. "Yes, they are beginning at last to see what we can do!" was the angry remark. The Germans have become more and more "Prussianised" in recent years. State worship had advanced so far that the German people entered the conflict in the perverted belief that the German Government had used every means to avert war. It is a mistake, however, to suppose that the German people entered the war reluctantly. They did not. There was perfect unity in the joyful thought of German invincibility, easy and complete victory, plenty of plunder, and such huge indemnities that the growing burden of taxation would be thrown off their shoulders. A country where the innocent children are scientifically inoculated with the virus of hate, where force, and only force, is held to be the determinant internationally of mine and thine, where the morals of the farmyard, are preached from the professorial chair in order to manufacture human cogs for the machine of militarism, is an undesirable and a dangerous neighbour and will continue so until it accepts other standards. A victorious Germany would not accept other standards. That is why I look on the little ships with so much admiration this morning. They sail between Germany and victory, for if they could be intimidated Britain would be starved out. Then the gospel that "only through hate can the greatest obstacles be overcome," would be the corner-stone of the most powerful Empire of history. End of Project Gutenberg's The Land of Deepening Shadow, by D. Thomas Curtin