The profession of arms has no longer the attraction that it hacL "



Unchanging Human Nature 215

this for us as well as for the American ? Surely almost all
that Mr. Lea sajrs applies to Great Britain as forcibly as
to the United States. We too have lain dreaming. We
have let our ideals tarnish. We have grown gluttonous,
also. . . . Shame and folly are upon us as well as
upon our brethren. Let us hasten with all our energy
to cleanse ourselves of them, that we can look the future
in the face without fear.
Exactly the same note dominates the literature of
an English protagonist like Mr. Blatchford, the
militarist socialist. He talks of the "fatal apathy"
of the British people. '* The people, " he says, break-
ing out in anger at the smaU disposition they show
to kill other people, **are conceited, self-indulgent,
decadent, and greedy. They will shout for the
Empire, but they will not fight for it. "* A glance
at such publications as Blackwood's, the National
Review, the London Spectator^ the London World,
will reveal precisely similar outbursts.
Of course, Mr. Blatchford declares that the Ger-
mans are very different, and that what Mr. Lea (in
talking of his coimtry) calls the "gourmandizing and
retching " is not at all true of Germany. As a matter
of fact, however, the phrase I have quoted might
have been ** lifted" from the work of any average
Pan-German, or even from more responsible quarters.
Have Mr. Blatchford and Mr. Lea forgotten that no
less a person than Prince von Bulow, in a speech made
in the Prussian Diet, used almost the words I have

* "Genxumy aad England/' p. 19.
