What do you know of war-madness, hate-madness? Were you capable of feeling it in your present personality, you could not write for me now, while those whom you love and respect are nearly all on one side of a war not yet finished. You may grasp hate intellectually, you may dramatize it; but you do not feel it, though you have suffered from its effects. The worst in the German heart is very bad--though I tell you not to hate them. The worst in all people is very bad, but the German is the greatest bully on the planet. The cruel Oriental races have a restraint which has grown in them through ages of culture; the German knows only the restraint of the German law, he respects only the restraint of the German law. He has no sense of right and wrong in the abstract, though he is often extremely sensitive as to what is right and wrong for him in his relation to those near him, his kinsmen and fellow-citizens. But those outside the race-group are outside his code of honor, however polished he may be. I am speaking now of the race, not of the few who have by long residence abroad absorbed somewhat of world-brotherhood and the more delicate sensibilities of international relations. And mark this also: The German can love as thoroughly as he can hate; but he can love only his own, something which is an extension of himself, a secondary ego, the _me_ in another form. A German may love a foreign wife, if he can Germanize her. A German may love a foreign friend, if that friend does not stand in the way of something he wants for himself. I am not referring to those sudden outpourings of emotion to which those emotional people are subject. I am not referring to their surface kindliness, which is the overflow of emotion. And still I say, love these unlovable people, love them so much that they will be detached from their race-centre and will flow out in melting response to everything that is not German. The world can never really soften the German shell by throwing stones against it. When they break down in this war, they will not be any more essentially lovable because they are weaker. Love them by trying to understand them. It will take decades for the arrogant and self-exalting German to see that there is anything outside that may be superior to what is inside his shell. He respects only might. He must be conquered by might. From his enforced respect of a superior might he may be led gradually to see the superior right of that gentleness which does not use its might to coerce him when further coercion is unnecessary.