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Page 29
"To Germany?"
He shook his head.
"Further away--to Sweden."
"I forgot," she murmured. "You looked as though you were posing for
a statue of some one in exile," she observed. "Come, let us go a
little lower down--unless you want to stay here and be blown to
pieces."
"I was on my way back to the hotel," he answered quickly, as he
followed her lead, "but to tell you the truth I was feeling a little
lonely."
"That," she declared, "is your own fault. I asked you to come to
Mainsail Haul whenever you felt inclined."
"As I have felt inclined ever since the evening I arrived," he
remarked with a smile, "you might, perhaps, by this time have had
a little too much of me."
"On the contrary," she told him, "I quite expected you yesterday
afternoon, to tell me how you like the place and what you have been
doing. So you were thinking about--over there?" she added,
moving her head seawards.
"Over there absorbs a great deal of one's thoughts," he confessed,
"and the rest of them have been playing me queer tricks."
"Well, I should like to hear about the first half," she insisted.
"Do you know," he replied, "there are times when even now this war
seems to me like an unreal thing, like something I have been reading
about, some wild imagining of Shelley or one of the unrestrainable
poets. I can't believe that millions of the flower of Germany's
manhood and yours have perished helplessly, hopelessly, cruelly.
And France--poor decimated France!"
"Well, Germany started the war, you know," she reminded him.
"Did she?" he answered. "I sometimes wonder. Even now I fancy, if
the official papers of every one of the nations lay side by side,
with their own case stated from their own point of view, even you
might feel a little confused about that. Still, I am going to be
very honest with you. I think myself that Germany wanted war."
"There you are, then," she declared triumphantly. "The whole thing
is her responsibility."
"I do not quite go so far as that," he protested. "You see, the
world is governed by great natural laws. As a snowball grows larger
with rolling, so it takes up more room. As a child grows out of its
infant clothes, it needs the vestments of a youth and then a man.
And so with Germany. She grew and grew until the country could not
hold her children, until her banks could not contain her money,
until she stretched her arms out on every side and felt herself
stifled. Germany came late into the world and found it parcelled
out, but had she not a right to her place? She made herself great.
She needed space."
"Well," Philippa observed, "you couldn't suppose that other nations
were going to give up what they had, just because she wanted their
possessions, could you?"
"Perhaps not," he admitted. "And yet, you see, the immutable law
comes in here. The stronger must possess--not only the stronger
by arms, mind, but by intellect, by learning, by proficiency in
science, by utilitarianism. The really cruel part, the part I was
thinking of then, as I looked out across the sea, is that this
crude and miserable resort to arms should be necessary."
"If only Germans themselves were as broad-minded and reasonable as
you," Philippa sighed, "one feels that there might be some hope for
the future!"
"I am not alone," he assured her, "but, you see, all over Germany
there is spread like a spider's web the lay religion of the citizen
--devotion to the Government, blind obedience to the Kaiser.
Independent thought has made Germany great in science, in political
economy, in economics. But independent thought is never turned
towards her political destinies. Those are shaped for her. For
good or for evil her children have learnt obedience."
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