break the wheel of torment in which at present we revolve, and bring about the necessary moral and spiritual _détente_ without which the world must surely perish. Peace is not a question of documents and treaties. The world is still in a condition of bitter strife, because the spiritual values which make peace in the real sense possible are at present wholly lacking in the relations of the respective nations. I am driven to the conclusion that in this, as in other respects, the instinct of the great mass of the people throughout Europe is sounder and better than that of their rulers. Whatever the schemes and intrigues of a tortuous diplomacy, it is already clear that the working-classes are determined not to be made pawns in any fresh war of aggression. The German working-man is saturated with the misery of war. He will have no more of it unless some policy of oppression, suicidal in its character, re-creates the temper and spirit of the post-Jena period. Among my memories of Germany I dwell on none with more hope than an incident which befell us one spring evening in the Eifel. We were spending Sunday at Nideggen, a village perched high on its red volcanic cliffs above the valley of a delectable trout stream. We stopped in the course of our walk to admire a cottage garden where peas and beans were growing with mathematical diligence and regularity. Care had obviously been lavished on every plant and flower of the little plot, which lay on a sunny slope facing south. The owner who was hard at work among the peas, seeing our interest, asked if we would like to go over his garden. We accepted the invitation willingly, and he conducted us with pride from one end to the other of his tiny kingdom. He was an admirable type of peasant, a tall grave man with honest eyes and courteous manners. He combined some market-gardening with his business of stone-mason. The conversation drifted as usual to the war. He had served in a pioneer corps but had come through, “Gott sei dank,” unscathed. Of war or the possible recurrence of war he spoke with that intense horror which marks all the German working-classes. Never must such a thing happen again, he said; never must there be another war. My mind fled across the seas to a corner of Kent where I was well assured on this fine spring evening, another friend of mine, one William Catt, a son of the soil, just as honest and simple, just as devoted to his home and family, was also attending to peas and runner beans. William Catt too had served in the war. What crazy system could send those two good men with rifles in their hands to shoot each other? The Nideggen peasant had reflected to some purpose on “Earth’s return for whole centuries of folly, noise, and sin.” Spade in hand he looked across the fair landscape at our feet, where the river lay like a silver streak winding among woods and meadows. Then he turned to me and said very seriously, “For a thousand