The Wisdom of Father Brown

onest. When it yielded a point, it yielded audibly. It

lieved in it. We thought the time had passed for real wars, that we were far too highly civilized. Of course I knew that the military party to which my father belonged would have welcomed a war, for war was their profession, their game, their excuse for being, and I heard more or less talk among my brothers of Pan-Germanism; but still I imagined that it was merely a defensive Teutonic ideal, just as our oppressive standing army was a necessity owing to our geographical position. My brother Karl said once-it comes back to me, although I h

g, sullen, determined-even in Bavaria the old serenity, the settled feeli

their teeth-and from about the time you speak of-over the wrongs of Germany. What the wrongs were I never could make out, and I am bound to say I did not listen very attentiv

orld and was forced to compromise. France gave her a slice of the Kongo in exchange for Germany's consent to a French Protectorate in Morocco. Of course-after that it must have been evident to all the

than her teeth. Gradually the idea must have permeated, taken possession of the minds of men who had vast fortunes to increase or lose, that sooner or later they must fight for what they had and

that they have proved themselves the most criminal fools unhung. I'm glad that I am a Bavarian, and that Prussia, whom we have always so hated and despised that we have never turned the lions about on the Siegesthor, should be t

, where I often knew more than the newspapers; at all events where I was constantly in the society of thinking men. Also honest men, for war was the last th

Central Empires to actual starvation, not merely devitalizing subnourishment; combined with their own certainty that the Teutonic Powers would go on fighting, under the lash of Prussia,

hysical, financial, economic. To suffer for a generation, at least, the fate of the outlaw, mangy dogs nos

ce and Britain billions of dollars and millions o