It is plain that the promise, or extension of responsibility through time, is what chiefly distinguishes us, I will not say from savages, but from brutes and reptiles.  This was noted by the shrewdness of the Old Testament when it summed up the dark, irresponsible enormity of Leviathan in the words, “Will he make a pact with thee?” The promise, like the wind, is unknown in nature and is the first mark of man.  Referring only to human civilization, it may be said with seriousness that in the beginning was the Word.  The vow is to the man what the song is to the bird or the bark to the dog; his voice, whereby he is known.  Just as a man who cannot keep an appointment is not fit to fight a duel, so the man who cannot keep an appointment with himself is not sane enough even for suicide.  It is not easy to mention anything on which the enormous apparatus of human life can be said to depend.  But if it depends on anything it is on this frail cord, flung from the forgotten hills of yesterday to the invisible mountains of tomorrow.  On that solitary string hangs everything from Armageddon to an almanac, from a successful revolution to a return ticket.  On that solitary string the barbarian is hacking heavily with a sabre which is fortunately blunt.

Prussia’s Great Discovery.

Any one can see this well enough merely by reading the last negotiations between London and Berlin.  The Prussians had made a new discovery in international politics—­that it may often be convenient to make a promise, and yet curiously inconvenient to keep it.  They were charmed, in their simple way, with this scientific discovery and desired to communicate it to the world.  They therefore promised England a promise on condition that she broke a promise, and on the implied condition that the new promise might be broken as easily as the old one.  To the profound astonishment of Prussia, this reasonable offer was refused.  I believe that the astonishment of Prussia was quite sincere.  That is what I mean when I say that the barbarian is trying to cut away that cord of honesty and clear record on which hangs all that men have made.

The friends of the German cause have complained that Asiatics and Africans upon the very verge of savagery have been brought against them from India and Algiers.  And in ordinary circumstances I should sympathize with such a complaint made by a European people.  But the circumstances are not ordinary.  Here again the quite unique barbarism of Prussia goes deeper than what we call barbarities.  About mere barbarities, it is true, the Turco and the Sikh would have very good reply to the superior Teuton.  The general and just reason for not using non-European tribes against Europeans is that given by Chatham against the use of the red Indian—­that such allies might do very diabolical things.  But the poor Turco might not unreasonably ask, after a week-end in Belgium, what more diabolical things he could do than the highly cultured Germans were doing themselves.