Can the splendid land of Goethe unlearn its Prussian lesson and regain its own noble sanity, or has it too long inhaled the fumes? There is no saying yet. Still they sit inside their wall. Like a trained chorus they still repeat that England made the war, that Louvain was not destroyed, that Rheims was not bombarded, that their Fatherland is the unoffending victim of world-jealousy. When travelers ask what proofs they have, the trained chorus has but one reply: "Our government officials tell us so." Berlin, Cologne, Munich--all their cities--give this answer to the traveler. Nothing that we know do they know. It is kept from them. Their brains still wear the Prussian uniform and go mechanically through the Prussian drill. Will adversity lift this curse? Something happened at Louvain--a little thing, but let it give us hope. In the house of a professor at the University some German soldiers were quartered, friendly, considerate, doing no harm. Suddenly one day, in obedience to new orders, they fell on this home, burned books, wrecked rooms, destroyed the house and all its possessions. Its master is dead. His wife, looking on with her helpless children, saw a soldier give an apple to a child. "Thank you," she said; "you, at least, have a heart." "No, madam," said the German; "it is broken." Goethe said: "He who wishes to exert a useful influence must be careful to insult nothing.... We are become too humane to enjoy the triumphs of Cæsar." Ninety years after he said this Germany took the Belgian women from their ruined villages--some of these women being so infirm that for months they had not been out-of-doors--and loaded them on trains like cattle, and during several weeks exposed them publicly to the jeers and scoffs and insults of German crowds through city after city. Perhaps the German soldier whose heart was broken by Louvain will be one of a legion, and thus, perhaps, through thousands of broken German hearts, Germany may become herself again. She has hurled calamity on a continent. She has struck to pieces a Europe whose very unpreparedness answers her ridiculous falsehood that she was attacked first. Never shall Europe be again as it was. Our brains, could they take in the whole of this war, would burst. But Calamity has its Pentecost. When its mighty wind rushed over Belgium and France, and its tongues of fire sat on each of them, they, too, like the apostles in the New Testament, began to speak as the Spirit gave them utterance. Their words and deeds have filled the world with a splendor the world had lost. The flesh, that has dominated our day and generation, fell away in the presence of the Spirit. I have heard Belgians bless the martyrdom and awakening of their nation. They have said: "Do not talk of our suffering; talk of our glory. We have found ourselves."