not belie the nostril diagnosis. I quote from Hoche's Bismarck Intime—
"Apropos of the burnt villages and the peasants who were burnt, Bismarck remarked that the smell from the villages was 'like the smell of roast onions.' Favre remarked to Bismarck that ladies were to be seen strolling on the boulevards, and pretty, healthy children were playing around. 'You surprise me,' said Bismarck; 'I thought you had already eaten all the children.'
"Favre complained to Bismarck that his soldiers had fired on a hospital, L'Hospice des Quinze-Vingts: 'Why not?' he replied. 'The French fired on our soldiers who were vigorous and strong.'"
The Prussia, to whose tradition he succeeded, lives in the irony or indignant protest of the great humanists. I cite but two. "War," said Mirabeau, "is the national industry of Prussia." And Mr. Frederic Harrison, in a superb essay, published when Germany was hammering at the gates of Paris in 1870-71, drew out a sound digest of title—
"Prussia is the sole European kingdom which has been built up province by province on the battlefield, cemented stone by stone in blood. Its kings have been soldiers; sometimes generals, sometimes drill-sergeants, but ever soldiers; its people are a drilled nation of soldiers on furlough; its sovereign is simply commander-in-chief; its
