If GerMan statesmen and publicists care, as we have sug-
gested to our own people, to use their imagination and put themselves in our places, they are bound to arrive at the conclusion just stated. Mark, we do not ask them to assume that we are benevolent monopolists of all the virtues, but merely to exercise the sympathy of comprehension, not of approbation, in regard to conditions which prevail elsewhere. Germany herself, no doubt, is in the stage when wars of prevention may seem, and indeed possibly are, good policy. For good or evil we have completely passed through that euge, and are only capable of waging wars of defence.
Germany, however, will make a capital mistake if she thinks that therefore a war of defence will not be waged by Britain with energy and determination, and will not unite the whole country, or, again, that we do not recognize that to defend an ally is an essential part of our own defence. If you let your neighbour's house be burnt, you are only too likely to he unable to defend your own from the flames.
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