One or two better-travelled and better-educated pastors have expressed mild regret at the bloodthirsty attitude of their brethren in private conversation.  But I never heard of one who had the courage to “speak out in open meeting.”

The modern, material Germany has not much use for religion except as a factor in government.  The notorious spread of extreme agnosticism in the last quarter of a century renders it essential for the clergy to hold their places by stooping to the violence of the Professors.  Mixed with their attitude of hostility to Britain is a considerable amount of professional jealousy and envy.  A number of German pastors paid a visit to London some two or three years before the outbreak of war, and I happened to meet one of them recently in Germany.  So far from being impressed by what he had seen there, he had come to the conclusion that the English clergy, and especially the Nonconformists, were an overpaid, and undisciplined body, with no other aim than their personal comfort.  He had visited Westminster Abbey, St. Paul’s, Spurgeon’s Tabernacle, the City Temple, and had studied—­so he told me—­English Wesleyanism and, Congregationalism in several provincial centres.  He was particularly bitter about one Nonconformist who had accepted a large salary to go to the United States.  He returned to Germany impressed with the idea that the Nonconformist and State Churches alike were a body of sycophants, sharing the general decadent state of the English.  What struck him principally was what he referred to continually as the lack of discipline and uniformity.  Each man seemed to take his own point of view, without any regard to the opinions of the particular religious denomination to which he belonged.  All were grossly ignorant of science and chemistry, and all were very much overpaid.  Here, I think, lay the sting of his envy, and it is part of the general jealousy of England, a country where everybody is supposed to be underworked and overpaid.

The only worse country in this respect from the German point of view is the United States, “where even the American Lutheran pastors have fallen victims to the lust for money.”  The particular Lutheran of whom I am speaking had been the guest of an English Nonconformist minister and his wife, who had evidently tried to be as hospitable as possible, and had no doubt put themselves out to take him for excursions and outings in the Shakespeare country.

“It was nothing but eating and drinking and sightseeing,” remarked the Herr Pastor.

I suggested that he was a guest, to be looked after.