With the acceptance by England of the German Insurance Act, I bring this sketch of the past relations of the two countries to an end.  I have written this book because I wish, once and for all, to be done with my friend Professor Whirlwind of Prussia, who has long despaired of really defending his own country, and has fallen back upon abusing mine.  He has dropped, amid general derision, his attempt to call a thing right when even the Chancellor who did it called it wrong.  But he has an idea that if he can show that somebody from England somewhere did another wrong, the two wrongs may make a right.  Against the cry of the Roman Catholic Poles the Prussian has never done, or even pretended to do, anything but harden his heart; but he has (such are the lovable inconsistencies of human nature) a warm corner in his heart for the Roman Catholic Irish.  He has not a word to say for himself about the campaign in Belgium, but he still has many wise, reproachful words to utter about the campaign in South Africa.  I propose to take those words out of his mouth.  I will have nothing to do with the fatuous front-bench pretensions that our governors always govern well, that our statesmen are never whitewashed and never in need of whitewash.  The only moral superiority I claim is that of not defending the indefensible.  I most earnestly urge my countrymen not to hide behind thin official excuses, which the sister kingdoms and the subject races can easily see through.  We can confess that our crimes have been as mountains, and still not be afraid of the present comparison.  There may be, in the eyes of some, a risk in dwelling in this dark hour on our failures in the past:  I believe profoundly that the risk is all the other way.  I believe that the most deadly danger to our arms to-day lies in any whiff of that self-praise, any flavour of that moral cowardice, any glimpse of that impudent and ultimate impenitence, that may make one Boer or Scot or Welshman or Irishman or Indian feel that he is only smoothing the path for a second Prussia.  I have passed the great part of my life in criticising and condemning the existing rulers and institutions of my country:  I think it is infinitely the most patriotic thing that a man can do.  I have no illusions either about our past or our present. I think our whole history in Ireland has been a vulgar and ignorant hatred of the crucifix, expressed by a crucifixion.  I think the South African War was a dirty work which we did under the whips of moneylenders.  I think Mitchelstown was a disgrace; I think Denshawi was a devilry.

Yet there is one part of life and history in which I would assert the absolute spotlessness of England.  In one department we wear a robe of white and a halo of innocence.  Long and weary as may be the records of our wickedness, in one direction we have done nothing but good.  Whoever we may have wronged, we have never wronged Germany.  Again and again we have dragged her from under the just vengeance of her enemies, from the holy anger of Maria Teresa, from the impatient and contemptuous common sense of Napoleon.  We have kept a ring fence around the Germans while they sacked Denmark and dismembered France.  And if we had served our God as we have served their kings, there would not be to-day one remnant of them in our path, either to slander or to slay us.