Alas! Hegel was right when he
said that we learn from history that men never learn anything
from history. With what anguish of mind the President sees that
we, the new conquerors, forgetting everything we professed to
fight for, are sitting down with watering mouths to a good square
meal of ten years revenge upon and humiliation of our prostrate
foe, can only be guessed by those who know, as he does, how
hopeless is remonstrance, and how happy Lincoln was in perishing
from the earth before his inspired messages became scraps of
paper. He knows well that from the Peace Conference will come, in
spite of his utmost, no edict on which he will be able, like
Lincoln, to invoke "the considerate judgment of mankind: and the
gracious favor of Almighty God." He led his people to destroy the
militarism of Zabern; and the army they rescued is busy in
Cologne imprisoning every German who does not salute a British
officer; whilst the government at home, asked whether it
approves, replies that it does not propose even to discontinue
this Zabernism when the Peace is concluded, but in effect looks
forward to making Germans salute British officers until the end
of the world. That is what war makes of men and women. It will
wear off; and the worst it threatens is already proving
impracticable; but before the humble and contrite heart ceases to
be despised, the President and I, being of the same age, will be
dotards.
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