[Grimne] In the power of distinguishing ideas. Of cou

[Brignolo]

Ne glimpse of what modern England is like they will discover that
England has a very broken, belated and inadequate sense of having an
obligation to Europe, but no sort of sense whatever of having any
obligation to Teutonism. This is the last and strongest of the Prussian
qualities we have here considered. There is in stupidity of this sort a
strange slippery strength: because it can be not only outside rules but
outside reason. The man who really cannot see that he is contradicting
himself has a great advantage in controversy; though the advantage
breaks down when he tries to reduce it to simple addition, to chess, or
to the game called war. It is the same about the stupidity of the
one-sided kinship. The drunkard who is quite certain that a total
stranger is his long-lost brother, has a greater advantage until it
comes to matters of detail. "We must have chaos within" said Nietzsche,
"that we may give birth to a dancing star." In these slight notes I have
suggested the principal strong points of the Prussian character. A
failure in honour which almost amounts to a failure in memory: an
egomania that is honestly blind to the fact that the other party is an
ego; and, above all, an actual itch for tyranny and interference, the
devil which everywhere torments the idle and the proud. To these must be
added a certain mental shapelessness which can expand or contract
without reference to reason or record; a potential infinity of excuses.
If the English had been on the German side, the German professors would
have noted what irresistible energies had evolved the Teutons. As the
English are on the other side
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