Choosing Chimneys

English chimneys are swept when the householder chooses, and German chimneys when the town council chooses. xxx277

forms

Vol 28 185 fixed forms wake men up

headlines

Most of us cannot count on getting our news only from headquarters but we can avoid getting it only from headlines. xxx 282

1915 France and Germany

And the deep and real irritation which people so different as the French, the Poles, and the Serbians feel against the Germans is largely the irritation against this underbred cleverness. It is the anger of a people that have had tragedies against a people that has never had anything but melodramas. xxx 273

Funny Men

No one but an Englishman could have described the democracy as consisting of free men, but yet of funny men. xxxv 208

Prussians

The Prussian has spoken of justice. When he speaks of justice he has begun to hope for mercy. For more than a hundred years he has spread and sunned himself in the summer of mere success; he has openly exulted in his freedom from scruple and religious restraint; he has pointed to his perjuries as other men point to their promises. He has never dreamed of answering the charge that he was false and cruel save by saying that he is cunning and strong. He has never pretended to recognise any law, human or divine, save in the sense that possession was nine points of it. When he begins to defend himself on the tenth point, it is proof that he has little left but a tenth. When the Prussian says he has the right to do a thing, you may be pretty sure he has no longer the might to do it. xxx 267

Self Government

Self-government arose among men (probably among the primitive men, certainly among the ancients) out of an idea which seems now too simple to be understood. The notion of self-government was not (as many modern friends and foes of it seem to think) the notion that the ordinary citizen is to be consulted as one consults an Encyclopaedia. He is not there to be asked a lot of fancy questions, to see how he answers them. He and his fellows are to be, within reasonable human limits, masters of their own lives. They shall decide whether they shall be men of the oar or the wheel, of the spade or the spear. The men of the valley shall settle whether the valley shall be devastated for coal or covered with corn and vines; the men of the town shall decide whether it shall be hoary with thatches or splendid with spires. Of their own nature and instinct they shall gather under a patriarchal chief or debate in a political market-place. Eugenics and Other Evils