I had German lessons from a Professor Hentze.  This old man was the first example of a militant German that I had come across.  He was always talking of Germany’s inevitable and splendid destiny.  Although a Hanoverian by birth, he was a passionate admirer of Bismarck and Bismarck’s policy, and was a furious Pan-German in sentiment.  “Where the German tongue is heard, there will be the German Fatherland,” he was fond of quoting in the original.  As he declared that both Dutch and Flemish were but variants of Low German, he included Holland and Belgium in the Greater Germany of the future, as well as the German-speaking Cantons of Switzerland, and Upper and Lower Austria.  Mentally, he possibly included a certain island lying between the North Sea and the Atlantic as well, though, out of regard for my feelings, he never mentioned it.  Hentze taught English and French in half a dozen boys’ and girls’ schools in Brunswick, and his brother taught history in the “Gymnasium.”  These two mild-mannered be-spectacled old bachelors, who in their leisure moments took snuff and played with their poodle, were tremendous fire-eaters.  They were both enormously proud of the exploits of a cousin of theirs who, under the guise of a harmless commercial traveller in wines, had been engaged in spying and map-making for five years in Eastern France prior to 1870.  It was, they averred (no doubt truthfully enough), owing to the labours of their cousin and of countless others like him, that the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 had been such an overwhelming success for Germany.  Where German interests were concerned, these two old brothers could see nothing under a white light.  And remember that they were teachers and trainers of youth; it was they who had the moulding of the minds of the young generation.  I think that any one who knows Germany well will agree with me that it is the influence of the teaching class, whether in school or university, that has transformed the German mentality so greatly during the last forty years.  These two mild-mannered old Hentzes must have infected scores and hundreds of lads with their own aggressively militant views.  By perpetually holding up to them their own dream of a Germany covering half Europe, they must have transmitted some of their own enthusiasm to their pupils, and underlying that enthusiasm was a tacit assumption that the end justified any means; that provided the goal were attained, the manner in which it had been arrived at was a matter of quite secondary importance.  I maintain that the damnable spirit of modern Germany is mainly due to the teaching profession, and to the doctrines it consistently instilled into German youth.