“These Englishmen have their teeth set.  They know perfectly well that they are fighting for their existence.  All this talk of the necessity of drumming up patriotism in England is bosh.  England has no organized publicity bureau such as Germany, and in contrast she may have seemed quiet to the point of apathy.  But don’t fancy that Englishmen are apathetic.  They are slow and they are sure.  They are just beginning to realize that they have these fellows by the back of the necks.  Before I left London I saw every day in the Temple Gardens, down by the Embankment, that steady drill of thousands of young men in straw hats, yellow shoes, and business suits.  I felt their spirit.

“There is a great fundamental difference between the spirit of Germany and the spirit of the Allies, and the whole world has recognized it.  With the Allies there has been no boasting, even now when they realize that the top is reached and this war is on the down grade.  There is determination, but there is no cock-sureness, no goose-step.  There is no insolence.

“Why, in the last analysis, is the whole world against Germany?  Because of her insufferable insolence.  It is an insolence which has been fairly bred in the bone of every German soldier.  I can give you a little concrete instance.  My daughter-in-law had been serving in one of the Paris hospitals ever since the war broke out.  She was finally placed on a committee which was to meet the trainloads of wounded soldiers when they first arrived.

“In one of the cars one day there was a wounded officer, a German.  He spoke no French, and a young French Lieutenant, very courteous, was trying to make him understand something.  My daughter, too, had no success.  Finally a young German, a common soldier who was in the same car, said to this German officer:  ’I am an Alsatian; I can interpret for you.’

“‘How dare you!’ And the German officer turned to him in perfect fury.  ‘How do you, a common soldier, dare to speak to me, an officer!’ And with that he struck the Alsatian full in the face with what little strength he had left.

“Now there is an example of the attitude to which the German military has been trained.

“On another occasion, when a French officer, after one of the battles, came courteously to the commanding German officer of the division and said, ‘Sir, you are my prisoner,’ the German spat in his face.  That is all very dramatic and you may say that he showed much spirit, but you could hardly call it a sporting spirit, surely not a civilized spirit.

“It is this domineering spirit that the whole world is resenting.  Nothing that Germany can do through her well-organized press agents can conceal that insolence which has been a continuous policy for many years.  American opinion is almost unanimous in its opposition to Germany for this one reason.

“Sir Gilbert Parker recently sent me a whole bundle of papers asking me to judge England’s case fairly and ask my friends in America to do the same.  I wrote back and asked him:  ’Why do you waste stamps sending evidence to America?  America has the evidence, and if there has been any anti-English feeling in America, von Bernstorff and Dernburg long since demolished it.’