Page:The battle of Dorking; (IA battleofdorking00chesrich).pdf/17

Rh have been quite immaterial to the main question.

Can we believe for a moment that the great German intellect has ever been under the slightest misapprehension of so very simple a matter?

War, honest war, may be Hell, as General Sherman described it. It is, at least, a form of Purgatory in which personality, nationality, are forces that count but little, while principle and motive (as was tragically exhibited in the great American struggle) are everything. Did not Christianity itself preach this kind of sanctified discord in which a novel sense of right, or the perception of higher ideal, should divide even the nearest and dearest, and set them at war not, as in old days, by reason of any "family compact," or mere racial tie, but for the sake of "Right," and—so far as ordinary friendly or neighbourly relations were concerned—in utter "scorn of consequence."

There, indeed, is the poignant tragedy of the case. To be at war with the countrymen of Schumann and Beethoven, of Goethe and Ranke, is not that an affliction to the very soul of England, an outrage to feelings and instincts tangled up with the very core of our civilization?

Terrible, indeed, is it that there should be amities which, at such crises, we must

"tear from our bosom

Though our heart be at the root."

No man or nation expects perfection in his friends. Honestly we have loved and respected the Ger-