England has no such questions in her mind.  England will surely tell the truth and defy the devil.  But the Briton in matters of music and the other arts is like ’Omer when he “smote ‘is bloomin’ lyre”; the Briton also will go and take what he may require, without much sentiment in the matter.

But the things that roll off the laps of the gods, after humanity has put its destinies there, sometimes are startlingly different from the expected fruits of victory.  We fight a war for one thing, win the war and get quite another thing.  The great war now waging began in a dispute over spheres of influence, market extensions, Places in the Sun and Heaven knows what of that sort of considerations.  Great changes in these matters, of course, must come out of the war.  But boundaries and markets will fluctuate with the decades and centuries.  The important changes that will come out of this war—­assuming that the Allies win it—­will be found in the changed relations of men.  The changes will be social and economic and they will be institutional and lasting.  For generally speaking, such changes as approach a fair adjustment of the complaints of the “have nots” against the “haves” in life, are permanent changes.  Kings, overlords, potentates, politicians, capitalists, high priests—­masters of various kinds—­find it difficult to regain lost privileges and perquisites.  And in this war Germany stands clearly for the “haves.”  If Germany wins, autocracy will hood its losing ground all over the world.  For the same autocracy in Berlin lives in Wall Street, and in the “city” in London, and in the caste and class interests of Italy and France.  But junkerdom in Germany alone among the nations of the earth rests on the divine right of kings that is the last resort of privilege.  In America we have the democratic weapons to break up our plutocracy whenever we desire to do so.  In England they are breaking up their caste and economic privileged classes rapidly.  In France and Italy junkerdom is a motheaten relic.  And when junkerdom in Germany is crushed, then at least the world may begin the new era, may indeed begin to fight itself free.  In the lands of the Allies the autocracy will be weakened by an allied victory.  In Germany the junkers will be strong if they win the war, and their strength will revive junkerism all over the earth.  If the Allies win, it will weaken junkerdom everywhere.  Germany, it is true, treats her working classes better than some of the Allies treat their working people.  But it is with the devilish wisdom of a wise slaveholder, who sees profit in fat slaves.  The workers get certain legal bonuses.  They have economic privileges, not democratic rights of free men under German rule.  And the roaring of the big guns out at the front, seemed to Henry and me to be the crashing walls of privilege in the earth.