“Think of those diplomats who were twenty years in Germany and yet knew nothing of what was going on around them and of its implications! You say that they did know, and that they warned their peoples? Well, then, you may shift the bone-heads on to other shoulders. Think of the diplomatic failures that have followed! “I bow my head to the people of England and to the incomparable valor of her armies and fleets. My friendly criticism is aimed at the one and only point in which she could be said to resemble Germany, viz., in a certain limited encouragement of supermen. “Now, if the last three years have taught us anything, it is this: the superman is going to be unsupered. Considering the high cost of up-keep and continuous adulation, he does not pay. He is in the nature of a needless tax upon human life and security. His mistakes, even, to use no harsher word, have slaughtered more human beings than there are in the world. The born gentleman and professional aristocrat, with a hot-air receiver on his name, who lives in a tower of inherited superiority and looks down at life through hazy distance with a telescope, has and can have no common sense. He is a good soldier, he knows the habits of the grouse and the stag, he can give an admirable dinner, he understands the principles of international law, but when international law turns into international anarchy he is not big enough to find the way of common sense through the emergency. He has not that intimate knowledge of human nature which comes only of a long and close contact with human, beings. Without that knowledge he will know no more of what is in the other fellow's mind and the bluff that covers it in a critical clash of wits than a baby sucking its bottle in a perambulator. He fails, and the cost of his failure no man can estimate. He stands discredited. As a public servant he is going into disuse and his going vindicates the judgment of our forefathers as to like holders of sense preferred. “Now is the time when all men must choose between two ideals: Behold the common sense of Germany become the sense that is common only among criminals! The sooner we recognize that, the better. They are really burglars in this great house of God we inhabit, seeking to rob it of its best possessions--Hindenburglars! the proud and merciless heart on the one hand, that of the humble and contrite heart on the other; between the Hun and the Anglo-Saxon, between evil and good. Faced by such an issue I declare myself ready to lay all that I have or may have on the old altar of our common faith. “My friend, be of good cheer. The God of our Fathers has not been Kaisered or Krupped or hurried in the least. There is no danger that Heaven will be Teutonized. “The shouting and the tumult dies--The captains and the kings depart--! Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice. “An humble and a contrite heart Lord God of hosts, be with us yet. “Lest we forget--lest we forget