us, I understand, for having broken “the bond of Teutonism”—­a bond which the Prussians have strictly observed, both in breach and observance.  We note it in the open annexation of lands wholly inhabited by negroes, such as Denmark.  We note it equally in their instant and joyful recognition of the flaxen hair and light blue eyes of the Turks.  But it is still the abstract principle of Prof.  Harnack which interests me most, and in following it I have the same complexity of inquiry, but the same simplicity of result.  Comparing the professor’s concern about “Teutonism” with his unconcern about Belgium, I can only reach the following result:  “A man need not keep a promise he has made.  But a man must keep a promise he has not made.”  There certainly was a treaty binding Britain to Belgium, if it was only a scrap of paper.  If there was any treaty binding Britain with Teutonism it is, to say the least of it, a lost scrap of paper—­almost what one might call a scrap of waste paper.  Here again the pedants under consideration exhibit the illogical perversity that makes the brain reel.  There is obligation and there is no obligation; sometimes it appears that Germany and England must keep faith with each other; sometimes that Germany need not keep faith with anybody and anything; sometimes that we, alone among European peoples, are almost entitled to be Germans; sometimes that besides us Russians and Frenchmen almost rise to a Germanic loveliness of character.  But through all there is, hazy but not hypocritical, this sense of some common Teutonism.

Prof.  Haeckel, another of the witnesses raised up against us, attained to some celebrity at one time through proving the remarkable resemblance between two different things by printing duplicate pictures of the same thing.  Prof.  Haeckel’s contribution to biology, in this case, was exactly like Prof.  Harnack’s contribution to ethnology.  Prof.  Harnack knows what a German is like.  When he wants to imagine what an Englishman is like he simply photographs the same German over again.  In both cases there is probably sincerity, as well as simplicity.  Haeckel was so certain that the species illustrated in embryo really are closely related and linked up that it seemed to him a small thing to simplify it by mere repetition.  Harnack is so certain that the German and Englishman are almost alike that he really risks the generalization that they are exactly alike.  He photographs, so to speak, the same fair and foolish face twice over, and calls it a remarkable resemblance between cousins.  Thus he can prove the existence of Teutonism just about as conclusively as Haeckel has proved the more tenable proposition of the non-existence of God.

Germans and English.