And yet after all the actual German is never, like the Frenchman, a natural and instinctive warrior--any more than he is, like the Englishman, a natural and instinctive adventurer. The whole business of Prussian militarism, with the half-witted philosophy by which it is justified, has to be imposed upon him from without by his masters. He fights just as he works, just as he tortures, violates and murders, because he is told to do so by persons in a superior position, holding themselves stiffly, dressed in uniform, and able to hit him in the face with a whip. Long before the war the absurd Koepenick incident gave us a glimpse of this astonishing docility on its farcical side. Its tragic side is well illustrated by the droves of helpless and inarticulate barbarians driven into the shambles daily (as at Verdun) for the sole purpose of covering up the blunders of their very “efficient” superiors. One could pity the wretches if there were not so considerable a leaven of wickedness in their stupidity. CECIL CHESTERTON [Illustration: A LETTER FROM THE GERMAN TRENCHES “We have gained a good bit; our cemeteries now extend as far as the sea.”] “It was I who opened fire on Rheims” Extremes so meet that the perversions of the Pacifist make but the reverse of the Prussian shield. As to the Pacifist all war is crime, so to the Prussian all crime is legitimate war. In the sublime resistance of the soldier who defends his country, its women and its children, even to the spilling of his soul, the Pacifist will see nothing but the crime of murder; and to the Prussian the act of war is mainly the perpetration of crime unhindered, from common lying to murder most foul, and beyond that. These crimes the Pacifist palliates and condones, with his Fellowships of Reconciliation and his schools for the Conscientious Liar; while the Prussian celebrates them as victories. The wilful destruction of works of art as an act of war is a crime unknown among civilised peoples; and if there be degrees in that crime the destruction of such a work as Rheims Cathedral--the pious labour of a colony of artists directed to one end for seven generations--is surely the most monstrous. At Rheims, at Louvain, at Ypres, at a dozen places this spite of the grinning _crétin_ has been manifested; and perhaps after all we were never justified in our amazement. Dull savages do such things in mere incomprehension; and mere incomprehension before a work of art is Prussian nature. The best Prussian use of such a work is to build upon it some irrelevant statistic, some ludicrous _polemik_, some laborious medley of meaningless side-issue. Let one thing be borne in mind, however, against the settlement to be made at the end of this war. It is against the policy of civilised peoples to trust savages with the possession either of works of art or weapons of precision.