They were not moved either by piety or priestcraft, but by a new and unexpected nomadism.  They were not inspired either by faith or fanaticism, but by an unusually aimless taste for foreign travel.  This theory that the war of the two great religions could be explained by “Wanderlust” was current about twenty years ago among the historical professors of Germany, and with many of their other views, was often accepted by the historical professors of England.  It was swallowed by an earthquake, along with other rubbish, in the year 1914.

Since then, so far as I know, the only person who has been patient enough to dig it up again is Mr. Ezra Pound.  He is well known as an American poet; and he is, I believe, a man of great talent and information.  His attempt to recover the old Teutonic theory of the Folk-Wandering of Peter the Hermit was expressed, however, in prose; in an article in the New Age.  I have no reason to doubt that he was to be counted among the most loyal of our allies; but he is evidently one of those who, quite without being Pro-German, still manage to be German.  The Teutonic theory was very Teutonic; like the German Hospice on the hill it was put together with great care and knowledge and it is rotten from top to bottom.  I do not understand, for that matter, why that alliance which we enjoy with Mr. Pound should not be treated in the same way as the other historical event; or why the war should not be an example of the Wanderlust.  Surely the American Army in France must have drifted eastward merely through the same vague nomadic need as the Christian Army in Palestine.  Surely Pershing as well as Peter the Hermit was merely a rather restless gentleman who found his health improved by frequent change of scene.  The Americans said, and perhaps thought, that they were fighting for democracy; and the Crusaders said, and perhaps thought, that they were fighting for Christianity.  But as we know what the Crusaders meant better than they did themselves, I cannot quite understand why we do not enjoy the same valuable omniscience about the Americans.  Indeed I do not see why we should not enjoy it (for it would be very enjoyable) about any individual American.  Surely it was this vague vagabond spirit that moved Mr. Pound, not only to come to England, but in a fashion to come to Fleet Street.  A dim tribal tendency, vast and invisible as the wind, carried him and his article like an autumn leaf to alight on the New Age doorstep.  Or a blind aboriginal impulse, wholly without rational motive, led him one day to put on his hat, and go out with his article in an envelope and put it in a pillar-box.  It is vain to correct by cold logic the power of such primitive appetites; nature herself was behind the seemingly random thoughtlessness of the deed.  And now that it is irrevocably done, he can look back on it and trace the large lines of an awful law of averages; wherein it is ruled by a ruthless necessity that a certain number of such Americans should write a certain number of such articles, as the leaves fall or the flowers return.