Page:Chesterton - Barbarism of Berlin (Cassell, 1914).djvu/22

 all responsible for this; but let us hope it will not spread. Let us hope for the happy day when we shall leave off chopping at the man’s head; and when nobody shall ever chop anything for ever and ever.” Do we say, “Let bygones be bygones; why go back to all the dull details with which the business began; who can tell with what sinister motives the man was standing there, within reach of the hatchet?” We do not. We keep the peace in private life by asking for the facts of provocation, and the proper object of punishment. We do go into the dull details; we do enquire into the origins; we do emphatically enquire who it was that hit first. In short, we do what I have done very briefly in this place.

Given this, it is indeed true that