“The world has never witnessed anything so far-reaching as this policy of insolence.  Men who in daily life are cultured and fine, whose ideals are high and noble, who have achieved names for themselves in literature, art, and science—­we all have many friends among them—­have become unconsciously tinctured with this policy.  They are intelligent men, but, by the gods, when they get on this subject of Germany’s place in the sun, they become paranoiacs!  This idea of their pre-eminence has become a disease with Germany.  Germany is actually sick with it, and the medicine that will cure her will be pretty bitter.

“I see that George Bernard Shaw presumes to announce that this policy of insolence, this extreme militarism, has been just as prominent in England and in France.  Mr. Shaw is great fun and very wise about a lot of things; moreover, he has lived in England a great deal longer than I have, but just the same he is dead wrong when he makes such a statement.  I have many old friends in the army and the navy, many in politics, and some of them are of the pronounced soldier, the militarist type.  Not one of them would ever dare to write such a book as Bernhardi has written, and I don’t believe there’s one of them that would take any stock in a man like Nietzsche.  Mr. Shaw is dead wrong here; worse than that, he is writing nonsense.

“We live from day to day hoping that the end will be the absolute annihilation of the militarist principle, this get-off-the-earth attitude.

“And what has all this,” concluded Mr. Smith suddenly, “to do with art?  I’m sure I don’t know.  No one is thinking about art now.”

“But you haven’t told me where your sympathies are in this war, Mr. Smith.”

“Hey?  I don’t have any sympathies, as you see.  I’m neutral as President Wilson bids me be; I don’t care who licks Germany, not even if it is Japan.”

The Helpless Victims

By Mrs. Nina Larrey Duryee.

[From THE NEW YORK TIMES, Sept. 9, 1914.]

Hotel Windsor.

DINARD, France, Sept. 1, 1914.

To the Editor of The New York Times: 

This is written in great haste to catch the rare boat to England.  The author is an American woman, who has spent nine happy Summers in this beautiful corner of France, where thousands of her compatriots have likewise enjoyed Brittany’s kindly hospitality.

Yesterday I saw issuing through St. Malo’s eleventh century gates 300 Belgian refugees, headed by our Dinard Mayor, M. Cralard.  I try to write calmly of that procession of the half-starved, terror-ridden throng, but with the memory of those pinched faces and the stories we heard of murder, carnage, burning towns, insulted women, it is difficult to restrain indignation.  They had come from Charleroi and Mons—­old men, women, and little children.  Not a man of strength or middle age among them, for they are dead or away fighting the barbarians who invested their little country against all honorable dealings.