"I see that George Bernard Shaw presumes to announce that this policy of insolence, this extreme militarism, has been just as prominent in England and in France. Mr. Shaw is great fun and very wise about a lot of things; moreover, he has lived in England a great deal longer than I have, but just the same he is dead wrong when he makes such a statement. I have many old friends in the army and the navy, many in politics, and some of them are of the pronounced soldier, the militarist type. Not one of them would ever dare to write such a book as Bernhardi has written, and I don't believe there's one of them that would take any stock in a man like Nietzsche. Mr. Shaw is dead wrong here; worse than that, he is writing nonsense.
"We live from day to day hoping that the end will be the absolute annihilation of the militarist principle, this get-off-the-earth attitude.
"And what has all this," concluded Mr. Smith suddenly, "to do with art? I'm sure I don't know. No one is thinking about art now."
"But you haven't told me where your sympathies are in this war, Mr. Smith."
"Hey? I don't have any sympathies, as you see. I'm neutral as President Wilson bids me be; I don't care who licks Germany, not even if it is Japan."
The Helpless Victims
By Mrs. Nina Larrey Duryee.
[From The New York Times, Sept. 9, 1914.]
Hotel Windsor.
DINARD, France, Sept. 1, 1914.
To the Editor of The New York Times: