Those only who love greatly can accept great suffering. Their boasted affection for Germania was nothing more than a fever of the imagination, a fictitious suggestion, a sentiment for display. It was the fascination felt by the ignorant for everything that glitters and makes a brave noise. They loved Germania in her success. They loved her triumphant, colossal, brobdingnagian. They loved her as a parvenu loves wealth and a gourmand good cheer. They loved her carnally, a power of the flesh. Has any one ever seen such a love accept sacrifice cheerfully and outlast misfortune? No, the ideal alone is worth more than life. The ideal alone evokes that wonderful love which increases with suffering, the chaste and shy love which shuns display, and which does not chant its pæans or unfurl the beauties of its splendid wings until the hour of absolute surrender. Now Germany has long ere this ceased to be an ideal.
This is what it means to have nothing but force to depend upon. When we lose it, we have lost all. This is what it means to build upon egoism and the political nullity of the masses. When the hour strikes for an appeal to their heroism, we encounter nothing but a soft and melancholy passivity.
But what an astounding organization it is which is capable of neutralizing so much inadequacy of will, and is able to make tough and efficient armies out of this assemblage of worthless material!
CROSSING SWITZERLAND
July 31, 1915.
Our convoy crossed Switzerland last night. I should have been sorry to be ill, ill with relief and happiness, for this would have made it impossible to describe our reception. It delighted and I must say it surprised me.
I know Switzerland well. I love it like a second motherland. I am familiar with its history and its institutions. I have made prolonged stays by the shores of Lake Geneva, and dear friendships convinced me long ere this that our two nations are animated by the same instinct, the instinct of independence and humanity. In the terrible duel now in progress I was assured beforehand of the freely given sympathy of our predecessors in the art of republican government.
I believed, nevertheless, that on our way through the country we should find this sympathy, however true and however certain, veiled and restrained.