[55] One might doubt, indeed, whether the British patriot has really the feeling against the German that he has against his own countrymen of contrary views. Mr. Leo Maxse, in the National Review for February, 1911, indulges in the following expressions, applied, not to Germans, but to English statesmen elected by a majority of the English people: Mr. Lloyd George is a "fervid Celt animated by passionate hatred of all things English"; Mr. Churchill is simply a "Tammany Hall politician, without, however, a Tammany man's patriotism." Mr. Harcourt belongs to "that particular type of society demagogue who slangs Peers in public and fawns upon them in private." Mr. Leo Maxse suggests that some of the Ministers should be impeached and hanged. Mr. McKenna is Lord Fisher's "poll-parrot," and the House of Commons is the "poisonous Parliament of infamous memory," in which Ministers were supported by a vast posse comitatus of German jackals.
[56] Speech at Stationers' Hall, London, June 6, 1910.
[57] I have in mind here the ridiculous furore that was made by the British Jingo Press over some French cartoons that appeared at the outbreak of the Boer War. It will be remembered that at that time France was the "enemy," and Germany was, on the strength of a speech by Mr. Chamberlain, a quasi-ally. Britain was at that time as warlike towards France as she is now towards Germany. And this is only ten years ago!
[58] In his "History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe," Lecky says: "It was no political anxiety about the balance of power, but an intense religious enthusiasm that impelled the inhabitants of Christendom towards the site which was at once the cradle and the symbol of their faith. All interests were then absorbed, all classes were governed, all passions subdued or colored, by religious fervor. National animosities that had raged for centuries were pacified by its power. The intrigues of statesmen and the jealousies of kings disappeared beneath its influence. Nearly two million lives are said to have been sacrificed in the cause. Neglected governments, exhausted finances, depopulated countries, were cheerfully accepted as the price of success. No wars the world had ever before seen were so popular as these, which were at the same time the most disastrous and the most unselfish."
[59] "Be assured," writes St. Augustine, "and doubt not that not only men who have obtained the use of their reason, but also little children who have begun to live in their mother's womb and there died, or who, having been just born, have passed away from the world without the Sacrament of Holy Baptism, must be punished by the eternal torture of undying fire." To make the doctrine clearer, he illustrates it by the case of a mother who has two children. Each of these is but a lump of perdition. Neither has ever performed a moral or immoral act. The mother overlies one, and it perishes unbaptized. It goes to eternal torment. The other is baptized and saved.
[60] This appears sufficiently from the seasons in which, for instance, autos da fé in Spain took place. In the Gallery of Madrid there is a painting by Francisco Rizzi representing the execution, or rather the procession to the stake, of a number of heretics during the fêtes that followed the marriage of Charles II., and before the King, his bride, and the Court and clergy of Madrid. The great square was arranged like a theatre, and thronged with ladies in Court dress. The King sat on an elevated platform, surrounded by the chief members of the aristocracy.
Limborch, in his "History of the Inquisition," relates that among the victims of one auto da fé was a girl of sixteen, whose singular beauty struck all who saw her with admiration. As she passed to the stake she cried to the Queen: "Great Queen, is not your presence able to bring me some comfort under my misery? Consider my youth, and that I am condemned for a religion which I have sucked in with my mother's milk."
[61] Spectator, December 31, 1910.
[62] See quotations, pp. 161-162, from Homer Lea's book, "The Valor of Ignorance."
[63] Thus Captain d'Arbeux ("L'Officier Contemporaine," Grasset, Paris, 1911) laments "la disparition progressive de l'idéal de revanche," a military deterioration which is, he declares, working the country's ruin. The general truth of all this is not affected by the fact that 1911, owing to the Moroccan conflict and other matters, saw a revival of Chauvinism, which is already spending itself. The Matin, December, 1911, remarks: "The number of candidates at St. Cyr and St. Maixent is decreasing to a terrifying degree. It is hardly a fourth of what it was a few years ago.... The profession of arms has no longer the attraction that it had."