Waterloo put an end to gloire, but it did not quite end the idea of the legitimacy of conquering civilized people and good neighbors—it did not make impossible the attitude of the German statesman who, when asked by our ambassador Hill why Germany did not conciliate Alsace-Lorraine, answered without the slightest suspicion that he was showing himself a barbarian: “But we have conquered them.” It was this attitude which gradually changed Germany’s preparations against France’s possible revanche after 1870, into a scheme to conquer the world. This antiquated idea of right by conquest, and this barbarous passion for it, have done more than anything else, except perhaps dogmatic religions, for the misery of mankind. This attitude survives, among lettered nations, only in Germany and her allies. We have got to fight until we kill it, no matter how many treaties of peace intervene: and it will not be killed as long as Germany is left in possession of a foot of the territory she has seized during the present war.
All these considerations render the idea of a “Peace without victory” worse than a mere disgusting piece of sentimentalism. They render it a danger, and one that unless obliterated, sooner or later must explode.
But behind all that, it is absurd in its very conception. What could be more ridiculous than a treaty with Germany? It would of course be ridiculous on the part of a nation that did not intend to keep it, but on the part of a nation that did intend to keep it, it would be doubly ridiculous. Nothing can be plainer than that real peace cannot be reached, no matter what treaties and intervals of nominal peaces intervene, before Germany has her conceit whipped out of her, and whipped out so thoroughly that, as in Napoleon’s case, there will be no need for discussion or pretended agreements, but that she will simply be told what she must do, and made to do it.
At one time there was hope that the kindly and modest German the elders among us knew, would take hold and attend to the matter himself. But he is not here to do it: we have got to do it ourselves, and we cannot afford to flinch, or dally, or stop half way.
What the Cat Thinks of the Dog
I am not altogether sure whether I like the Dog or merely tolerate him. It puzzles me to say just what I do, in a manner, like about my house-companion. For a certainty, his manners are very distressing, and they evoke my most hearty disapproval. I cannot abide those rude volcanic barking fits of his. Often, when lying snugly tail-enfolded by the gently warming kitchen stove, lost in a comfortable dreamless doze—how delicious this semi-Nirvana of the senses!—I would suddenly be startled into undesired wakefulness by my friend’s frenzied howls. You’d think he had wanted to call my attention to a mouse recently entrapped or, at least, to the arrival of the butcher with a fat quarter of lamb wherefrom one might expect the carving of good cheer for him and me. But no! nine times out of ten it would but be some uninteresting urchin whom he had caught sight of through the window, and who was sauntering a block away with an insolent swagger that could not but arouse my profound contempt. I sometimes find it far from easy to keep my temper in such circumstances and to refrain from wishing him and his urchin a watery grave the next time they betake themselves to the river for swimming and diving sports. Yet I must not judge him harshly. An unkind nature has granted him a most unmusical, a most nerve-shattering voice, incapable of the least culture.
I take much exception also to the ungentle and ungraceful manner in which he swings his tail, or rather flips it back and forth and jerks it up and down, for one can hardly talk of swinging where no smooth delicately rounded curves are perceptible. How inferior, both by heredity and by training, is the Dog’s handling of his tail to that of the Cat! How little he understands the art of curving and waving and uncurving the tail in the nicely nuanced rhythms and exquisitely designed patterns that are so familiar to ourselves! If the aerial artistry of the Cat’s tail may be fitly compared to the beautifully rounded brushwork of our Chinese laundrymen when, as I have incidentally observed him more than once, he prepares his stock of wash tickets, the tail movements of the Dog remind me of nothing so much as the ugly zigzagging and unsymmetrical lines that my master’s little boy produces, squeakingly, on his slate in his vain attempts to draw a locomotive (at least I gather, from various remarks that I have overheard, that this is what he has in mind). No, there is not the slightest reason to allow for an æsthetic strain in my friend’s psychology. Frankly, I do not believe he knows the difference between an Impressionist masterpiece and a bill-board daub. Nothing, further, can be more absurd than the frequency with which the Dog’s rapid and angular tail movements are executed. No sooner does the master, or his little boy, or the mistress, or even the garbage man appear, than this tail that I speak of is set furiously wagging and swishing, often at the cost of a cup or plate which may happen to be within reach of its tufted point. I wonder that they tolerate him in the kitchen at all. I shall never forget the time that, excited beyond control at the unexpected return of the master from a fishing excursion, he scampered about madly and lashed his tail from side to side with the utmost fury. Well accustomed by this time to his vulgar ways, I paid little attention to the hubbub but continued quietly lapping up my saucer of milk, when I was suddenly stunned by a powerful swish of the Dog’s milk-spattered tail against my face. Angered beyond expression, both by the Dog’s extreme rudeness and by the almost total loss of a savory meal, I was about to scratch out his eyes, but the evident unwillingness of the maid to suffer retaliatory measures, and the reflection on my part that the Dog’s conduct, reprehensible as it was, had not been dictated by any unfriendly feeling for myself, prevented a scrimmage. It was as well, for nothing pains me more than to part company with my dignity, even if only for a moment.
In view of so many just grounds for complaint,—and there are many that I might add,—it puzzles me, I repeat, to say just what I like about the Dog. Can it be that, living, as we do, under the same roof, and thus forced by circumstance to put up with each other for better or for worse, we have become habituated to a common lot, and learned to ignore the numerous divergencies of taste and philosophy? From a strictly scientific standpoint, this is an excellent explanation of our mutual forbearance, but I am afraid that sincerity prevents me from accepting it as a completely satisfying solution of the problem. How comes it that, when the Dog, in company with his master, has absented himself from the house for a period of more than usual length, as once for a week’s hunting jaunt, I find myself getting fidgety and morose, as though there were something missing to complete my usual feeling of contentment? And how comes it that last year, when the Dog’s right forefoot was caught in the door, and he set up a caterwauling (excuse the Hibernicism) that made him a frightful nuisance for the rest of the day, I, who would ordinarily have been the first to resent such a noise, as evidencing a deplorable lack of vocal self-control and taste, did on the contrary feel no small amount of sympathy for the suffering wretch? I imagine that there was something about the tilt of my tail and the glance in my eye that communicated my compassion to the Dog, for the next day he seemed a trifle more considerate of my preferences than had been his wont. I construed this as a species of thankfulness on his part. (Yet I would not lay too great stress on this; he may merely have had an attack of the blues, as a result of his recent misadventure.) And how comes it, farther, that I felt considerably nettled the other day when the neighbor’s boy kicked the Dog three times in succession? Prudence, to be sure, prevented my taking up an active defence of my friend, but I certainly felt at least an indefinite impulse in that direction.
Such incidents seem to argue a genuine vein of fellow feeling, of sympathy, for the Dog, though, I must insist, this sympathy never degenerates into a maudlin sentimentality. After all is said and done, there is never entirely absent a grain of contempt from my estimate of a mere dog, even of the Dog of the House. It is enough to admit that there is commingled with this contempt a certain something of more benevolent hue, a something which I must leave it to others to explain.