Page:Counter-currents, Agnes Repplier, 1916.djvu/230

Counter-Currents votes which the Germans of your section control?" should be asked by German agents, and answered by German newspapers, affronts our nation's honour, soils a sacred trust by ill-usage, and tears our neutrality to rags.

When the Lusitania was sunk, and the horror of the deed shamed all Christendom, save only those strange residents of Berlin who received the news with "enthusiasm," and "joyful pride," the first word tactfully whispered in our ear was that, while we might regret the drowning of Americans, we were impotent to resent it. And this impotence was to be a concession to the foreign vote. God only knows of what material Germany thought we were made,—putty, or gutta-percha, or sun-baked mud? Certainly not of flesh and blood. Certainly not with hearts to bleed, or souls to burn. Every comment vouchsafed by the German press placed us in the catalogue of worms warranted not to turn. 214