It is when Germany’s absence of morals is most blatant that her
presence of mind comes to the rescue. It is a strange and wonderful
mind that she reveals--a weird combination of childishness without
its innocence, of wickedness without its cunning. Yet somehow the
German mental process is sometimes convincing. It is really one of the
wonders of the world that it should be so. When a country that stole
Silesia, Poland, Schleswig, Alsace-Loraine, Belgium and Serbia solemnly
assures a shocked and startled world that its life-long object is to
protect the freedom of small nationalities; when a Government, that
kills peaceful passengers by the hundred and torpedoes neutral trading
ships, says it does so in the cause of the freedom of the seas; when a
frenzied Emperor, foiled in the effort to conquer Europe by a surprise
attack, vows that his only purpose is self-defence, one would think
that such talk could deceive nobody--not even the speaker. A child’s
lie embarrasses but does not mislead its elders. Why, then, does the
German lie mislead? Or is it that the bully only seems to be believed?
The feebler spirits of Holland would rather believe anything than be
forced into the turmoil of war. Germany, as a protector of the weak,
the champion of the small, they are willing to accept--rather than meet
Germany in arms. Nay, they--the descendants of the greatest seamen,
and to-day dependent on the sea for more than half the country’s
wealth--would prefer Germany’s guarantee of sea freedom than run the
risk of her land atrocities.
Raemaekers is the _enfant terrible_ of political argument. The German
contention is childish, the Dutch credulity is childish, and he meets
them with a child’s demonstration of what the truth would be. Three
great outlets of the sea are blocked by three brutal figures. We have
only to look at them to realise that here are dangerous playmates.