"Well, you don't forgive us."
"On the contrary, the generality of Englishmen forgive Germany now she is down."
My friend perceptibly winced at the word "down." I had used the wrong word. But it is true enough.
"We know the Quakers are our friends, and the pacifists," said he. "We are thankful for their friendship, but we need to win over the other people. Make the business people feel that the Versailles Peace is bad business, and the Imperialists that it is bad for Empire."
"They know that already, that it is not good for business and not very good for the Empire. What we have to get over is something psychological—the belief in 'the dirty Hun,' the belief in German trickery and spite."
He had never heard of that sentence which is a motto in Carmelite Street, "They'll cheat you yet, those Junkers," or "Once a German always a German."
There is a genuine belief among the English masses that the Germans are cheating us, that they are pretending to demobilize and keeping a large army in secret readiness, pretending to be unable to pay "reparations," not taxing themselves, faking their figures.
W—— and several others whom I met in Germany put it in the foreground of the work to be done for re-establishing Germany in the comity of nations, that it should be proved that Germany was not responsible for the beginning of the war. It is still the theme of innumerable articles in the Press. The German mind has not grasped the fact that no intelligent European blames Germany exclusively. Now that the hot mood of war is past we are all ready to recognize that we were all in part to blame. We all founded our security on armies and navies, the nation that produced the "Dreadnought" most of all. We were all living and picnicking and unfortunately quarrelling in the great cordite warehouse of European militarism, and one day it blew up. If we had not been so well prepared it could not have happened so. If the Kaiser pronounced the dreadful atheism of "Let the guns speak," he really did so after the event.
In debating this matter the German mentality disclosed itself in the Germans with whom I conversed in Berlin. I had a suspicion that one of them might have said England began it, if I had been other than an Englishman. Edward the Seventh who arranged the entente cordiale had evidently something to do with it. As I am a known warm friend of Russia he could not say Russia began it. His mind turned to a more obscure nation.
"To think that Europe should thus have been ruined and all those millions of lives lost," said he. "Just for stupid little Serbia."