have suffered (as was certain) a rebuff from the Germans, whom they hoped to conciliate. Moreover, had they desired individually to make friends of those who have been England's bitterest enemies, they might have done it through the twopenny post, without advertising their ill-timed magnanimity to the whole world.

They approached their German colleagues with the humility of sycophants. They assumed unwarrantably that the German professors "fully shared their heartfelt sorrow and regret for the breach that the war has occasioned in our friendly intercourse." On the German side the intercourse was rarely friendly. The German professors were (as we all know) engaged by the State to preach the sort of lessons which the State desired to inculcate. They were the warriors of what they called Kultur, whose first mission it was to destroy the learning and discipline of other countries. Friendly intercourse was the last thing in the world that they wanted with us, or with the French. They might use it as a cloak wherewith to cover the nakedness of their ridiculous vanity. They bragged loudly that there was a gulf fixed between them and others, and they rejected (at home) all community of kultur with other peoples, and especially the so-called Western European Ideas. The famous Professor Sombart spoke for all his colleagues when he proclaimed the German exclusiveness. "It is said that it is un-German"-these VOL. CCVIII.-NO. MCCLXII,

are his words-"to wish to be only German. That is a consequence of our wealth. We understand all foreign nations; none of them understands us, and none of them can understand us." By this time, no doubt, many foreign nations care little enough whether they understand kultur or not. But Professor Sombart's atti tude is not the attitude of one who desired before the war, or desires in this time of peace, the friendly intercourse Englishmen or Frenchmen. And he and his fellows might well have been left to find their way back as best they could to civilisation.

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In one sense the great war was made by the German professors. As they looked to their "army and the corps of officers to endow them with, and educate them in, higher values," so they were ready to preach the doctrine of "militarism" in all their chairs. It was for that purpose that they were paid by the State, and they did not forget that they were civil servants before they were scholars. No doubt, if Mr Fisher is permitted to remain long enough in power he will Teutonise our universities and our scholarship and our professors. He is not likely to take warning by the example of Germany. But notice with what different voices the professors-German and English-spoke when war was declared in 1914. "Our belief is "-thus said the manifesto signed by 3500 professors and lecturers of Germany"that the salvation of the 3 K

whole kultur of Europe depends upon the victory which German militarism' is about to achieve." Such was the tone of the Germans. In the meantime a set of British professors were hastening to explain how much they liked their German colleagues, who had permitted them to drink beer and smoke pipes in their presence, and how fervently they prayed that we should not, even under the bitterest provocation, take arms against them. These two attitudes were preserved right through the war, and and the complete difference between them makes it impossible that we should publicly acknowledge a friendship which never existed except on one side.

It is, therefore, in defiance of the truth that some few scholars of Oxford assure the Germans that "we personally approach you with the desire to dispel the embitterment and animosities which, under the impulse of loyal patriotism, may have passed between us.' This understatement of the truth is not even humorous. Whatever impulse has passed between the Germans and the friends of the Poet Laureate it is not the same. On the one side there has been ferocity always. On the other, sometimes а tepid benevolence, sometimes even a convinced pro Germanism. And the scholars of Oxford do themselves-for whom alone they speak-a great wrong if they pretend that the moment has come for an equal and a public reconciliation. Moreover, not

only were the German professors foremost in the campaign of insolence, they were busily employed in drawing up for the benefit of their future dominion sublime plans of annexation. Boasting that they alone were favoured of God, that no German soldier had ever inflicted pain upon an innocent human being, they shouted aloud that they should inherit the whole earth. "The territory open to future German expansion," thus Professor Hasse, "must extend from the North Sea and the Baltic to the Persian Gulf, absorbing the Netherlands and Luxemburg, Switzerland, the whole basin of the Danube, the Balkan Peninsula, and Asia Minor." There is a simple plan of conquest sketched by a professor, and it is not the professor's fault that the sketch has not by this time become a finished picture.

And as the German professors would, if they could, have laid hands upon the whole of Europe, they uttered no word of protest against the acts of violence done to universities and libraries. They oared not that priceless treasures were destroyed at Louvain, in defiance of the law of nations. They were not their treasures. They, in full knowledge of the approaching conflict, had already taken precautions and put their own "unicums," as a professor at Freiburg called them, in a safe place. Briefly, throughout the war they showed themselves the determined foes of learning,

and if there had to have been any approach between us, the approach should have come not from us, who have the right to anger, and who in fifty years may have the forbearance to forgive, but from the Germans. And Oxford has been snubbed by the Boche, as Oxford deserves. A little thought exercised by the anxious scholars might have convinced them that the snub was inevitable. The texts still exist which show what the Germans thought of us before the war, during the war, since the war. The German thought has not changed, and will not change. The one regret which the Germans feel is the regret that they did not emerge victorious, that they have not paid for their adventure by the enslavement of Europe, that they have not forced their kultur проп an admiring world. With those thoughts, and that one single regret, how should the Germans care to accept an offer of conciliation? The friends of Dr Bridges offered a gift which they did not value, and they rejected it with scorn.

After all, literature and scholarship are the pursuits of men, not of mobs. Our writers and scholars will not achieve better work because they have made a public attempt to overcome a just animosity, to stamp under foot a righteous embitterment. And what have the Germans to teach us that we cannot, if necessity asks us, get out of their books? Must we extend a civil hand to Herr

Wilamovitz-Möllendorf to learn from him the following lesson? "See what the war has laid bare in others," he writes. "What have we learnt of the soul of Belgium? Has it not revealed itself as the soul of cowardice and assagsination? They have no moral forces within them; therefore they resort to the torch and the dagger." Thus the compatriot of the butchers of Louvain, a professor, who once affected the friendship of England. If the war has taught him to write like that, need we proffer him the hand of friendly intercourse in public? And where the greatest of all has fallen so low, what shall we expect of the rest?

Would it not be better to pursue our work in peace and leave the Germans of the next generation to return to the paths of comradeship if they find that those paths are pleasant? At any rate, it is for us to see whether we will take, it is not ours to proffer, the reconciling hand.

When the Unknown Warrior was proudly carried for burial to Westminster Abbey, our mind went back to the ancient legend of Cimon, who won the good will of the Athenians by bringing home to Athens what was left of Theseus. "Cimon was marvellous careful to seek out his tomb"-so Plutarch tells the story-"because the Athenians had an oracle and prophecy that commanded them to bring his ashes and bones back to Athens and to

honour him as a demi-god. But they knew not where he was buried, for that the inhabitants of the island would never before confess where it was, nor suffer any man to seek it out, till he at the last with much ado found the tomb, put his bones aboard the Admiral galley sumptuously deoked, and so brought them again to his country." As Theseus returned in honour to his native land, so has returned the Unknown Warrior, he too on a galley sumptuously decked. A place has been found for his mortal spoils in Westminster Abbey, the last resting-place of our greatest dead. He symbolises, all unknown as he is, the courage and the ready sacrifice of his kind. He did his duty, with a simple fortitude, and as he died for others, so he resumes in his unnamed self the glory and the gratitude owed to them all.

The thought and the oeremony were Greek in their simplicity, and their simplicity it was, no doubt, which brought Cimon and Theseus to our mind. Altars were once set up to the Unknown God. The supreme honour of Westminster Abbey is given to the Unknown Warrior. Theseus returned to Athens, because there was an oracle and a prophecy. The Unknown Warrior is carried to his place in Westminster that the whole Empire may mourn the loss of those who fell in thousands for their fatherland, and admire in one grave the sacrifice of them all. In France he gave his life. What more had he to give?

In Westminster Abbey his bones shall rest for ever among the bones of kings and captains and great poets. In Browne's noble words, he has "entered the famous nations of the dead, and sleeps with princes and counsellors." His is the immortality which all would covet. His is the better part: he has no "naked nomination"; he has, what is better, "deserts and noble acts." Again the prose of Thomas Browne echoes in our ear, suggesting comfort for the Unknown Warrior: “To be nameless in worthy deed exceeds an infamous history. The Canaanitish woman lives more happily without a name than Herodias with one. And who had not rather have been the good thief than Pilate?"

The Unknown Warrior, then, is nameless in worthy deeds, and in that nobility we can picture him to ourselves. He is brother to Francis Doyle's Private of the Buffs

"A man of mean estate,

Who died, as firm as Sparta's king, Because his soul was great."

A plain man, who did as he was told, like the rest-who set duty before ambition, who was content to serve his country and to die for it, without a thought of sending his name to echo round the world. And he has won the highest reward of all. He is the Unknown Warrior; and it is the essence of his greatness and our respect that nobody will ever wonder whence he came or what acts of heroism he performed.

The wars of to-day are the

wars of nation against nation. There is no more place for professional gladiators. Men are Men are killed by adversaries whom they never see, who never see them. But this does not mean that the hour of heroism is passed. It means that heroes are multiplied by many thousands, and it gives us the reason why, in doing respect to the Unknown Warrior, we are showing our reverence for all those who, having fought and died for their country, are nameless. But in the moment of honouring the unknown, let us not forget or belittle the services of the known and named. A careless writer, carried away by enthusiasm, was inspired by the thought of the Un

known Warrior to proclaim that all the greatest deeds are done by the nameless. Thus he missed the relative values of things done and words spoken. Though nation wars against nation, it is still the leader who makes the victory certain. Though lofty sentiments echo in the hearts of thousands, it is the poet, working in solitude, who fashions the verse which is immortally remembered. Honour and gratitude are due to known and unknown, and when we pay our just tribute to the hero who lies buried in Westminster Abbey, it is well not to forget the injunction of the Preacher: "Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us."