Lastly, it was pleasant to find that Brown has not a spark of sympathy with those who say that, because Germany has destroyed art treasures in Belgium and France, the Allies should retaliate with similar rudeness if they reach Berlin.  He holds that if for any reason best known to themselves (such as the wish for a sunnier location) the Hohenzollerns should by and by vacate their present residence, a nice villa should be provided for them, and that all the ancestral statues in the Sieges-Allee should be conveyed to it intact, and perhaps put up in the back garden.  There the Junkers could drop in of an evening, on their way home from their offices, and chat pleasantly of old times.  Brown thinks they should be allowed to retain all their iron crosses, and even given some more, with which, after smart use of their pocket combs, they would cut no end of a dash among the nursemaids.

As for the pipe, I was informed that it had now done its work, and I could take it away as a keepsake.  I took it, but wondered afterward at Brown’s thinking he had the right to give it me.

A disquieting feeling has since come over me that perhaps it was Sir James I had been interviewing all the time, and Brown who had escaped down the elevator.

A “Credo” for Keeping Faith

By John Galsworthy.

I believe in peace with all my heart.  I believe that war is outrage—­a black stain on the humanity and the fame of man.  I hate militarism and the god of force.  I would go any length to avoid war for material interests, war that involved no principles, distrusting profoundly the common meaning of the phrase “national honor.”

But I believe there is a national honor charged with the future happiness of man, that loyalty is due from those living to those that will come after; that civilization can only wax and flourish in a world where faith is kept; that for nations, as for individuals, there are laws of duty, whose violation harms the whole human race; in sum, that stars of conduct shine for peoples, as for private men.

And so I hold that without tarnishing true honor, endangering civilization present and to come, and ruining all hope of future tranquillity, my country could not have refused to take up arms for the defense of Belgium’s outraged neutrality, solemnly guaranteed by herself and France.

I believe, and claim in proof, the trend of events and of national character during the last century, that in democracy alone lies any coherent hope of progressive civilization or any chance of lasting peace in Europe, or the world.

I believe that this democratic principle, however imperfectly developed, has so worked in France, in England, in the United States, that these countries are already nearly safe from inclination to aggress, or to subdue other nationalities.

And I believe that while there remain autocratic Governments basing themselves on militarism, bitterly hostile to the democratic principle, Europe will never be free of the surcharge of swollen armaments, the nightmare menace of wars like this—­the paralysis that creeps on civilizations which adore the god of force.