What cannot be defended is something really peculiar to Prussia, of which we hear numberless stories, some of them certainly true.  It might be called the one-sided duel.  I mean the idea that there is some sort of dignity in drawing the sword upon a man who has not got a sword—­a waiter, or a shop assistant, or even a schoolboy.  One of the officers of the Kaiser in the affair at Zabern was found industriously hacking at a cripple.  In all these matters I would avoid sentiment.  We must not lose our tempers at the mere cruelty of the thing, but pursue the strict psychological distinction.  Others besides German soldiers have slain the defenseless, for loot or lust or private malice, like any other murderer.  The point is that nowhere else but in Prussian Germany is any theory of honor mixed up with such things, any more than with poisoning or picking pockets.  No French, English, Italian, or American gentleman would think he had in some way cleared his own character by sticking his sabre through some ridiculous greengrocer who had nothing in his hand but a cucumber.  It would seem as if the word which is translated from the German as “honor” must really mean something quite different in German.  It seems to mean something more like what we should call “prestige.”

Absence of the Reciprocal Idea.

The fundamental fact, however, is the absence of the reciprocal idea.  The Prussian is not sufficiently civilized for the duel.  Even when he crosses swords with us his thoughts are not as our thoughts; when we both glorify war we are glorifying different things.  Our medals are wrought like his, but they do not mean the same thing; our regiments are cheered as his are, but the thought in the heart is not the same; the Iron Cross is on the bosom of his King, but it is not the sign of our God.  For we, alas! follow our God with many relapses and self-contradictions, but he follows his very consistently.  Through all the things that we have examined, the view of national boundaries, the view of military methods, the view of personal honor and self-defense, there runs in their case something of an atrocious simplicity; something too simple for us to understand; the idea that glory consists in holding the steel, and not in facing it.

If further examples were necessary it would be easy to give hundreds of them.  Let us leave, for the moment, the relations between man and man in the thing called the duel.  Let us take the relation between man and woman, in that immortal duel which we call a marriage.  Here again we shall find that other Christian civilizations aim at some kind of equality, even if the balance be irrational or dangerous.  Thus, the two extremes of the treatment of women might be represented by what are called the respectable classes in America and in France.  In America they choose the risk of comradeship, in France the compensation of courtesy.  In America it is practically possible for any young gentleman to take any young lady for what he calls (I deeply regret to say) a joy ride; but at least the man goes with the woman as much as the woman with the man.  In France the young woman is protected like a nun while she is unmarried; but when she is a mother she is really a holy woman; and when she is a grandmother she is a holy terror.