"The damned stupidity of it all!" he said. "The infernal wickedness of those Old Men who have arranged this thing!"
Three small boys came galloping up Cheyne Walk with toy reins and tinkling bells.
"Those children," said Brand, "will see the things that we have seen and go into the ditches of death before their manhood has been fulfilled. We fought to save them, and have failed."
He told me that even Elsa had been aghast at the Peace Terms.
"I hoped more from the generous soul of England," she had written to him.
Franz von Kreuzenach had written more bitterly than that.
"We have been betrayed. There were millions of young men in Germany who would have worked loyally to fulfil Wilson's conditions of peace as they were pledged in his Fourteen Points. They would have taken their punishment, with patience and courage, knowing the penalty of defeat. They would have worked for the new ideals of a new age, which were to be greater liberty and the brotherhood of man in a League of Nations. But what is that League? It is a combination of enemies, associated for the purpose of crushing the German people and keeping her crushed. I, who loved England and had no enmity against her even in war, cannot forgive her now for her share in this Peace. As a German I find it unforgivable, because it perpetuates the spirit of hatred, and thrusts us back into the darkness where evil is bred."
"Do you agree with that?" I asked Brand.
"On the whole, yes," he said, gravely. "Mind you, I'm not against punishing Germany. She had to be punished. But we are substituting slow torture for just
