Monsieur Segotin's Story
you think that that is the way to give them a new heart? 'Next time,' they will say to themselves, 'next time we must do better.' That will be all. And next time, mark me, they will do better—much better. Twenty years, thirty years, forty, fifty, a hundred, they will give to it; but when next they strike, well, there will be no miracles going then; no Marne, for example. They will walk over us.
"You say we shall know better. We will know no better. In 1870 the world had its lesson if it had had eyes to read, yes, and a score of such lessons before that. And we shall forget. The new generations will come to believe in the good will of Germany as we did. Germany will see to that. But when her hour again strikes it will be finis. The entire earth will be swallowed at a gulp, and we shall have the days of Assyria back again everywhere between the two poles. There will be the Germans and there will be their slaves, and that will be all. And the beautiful earth will yield her treasures and her joys not for mankind as was intended, but for its masters.
"You see, my friend," M. Segotin continued after another slow sip, "I know what I am saying. In England you have still no notion of the reality of the danger which the world, and you with it, have for the moment escaped. But in Belgium we are in a better position to judge. And I—I, Aristide Gustave Segotin, three years slave to those people, I tell you that it is not amusing to live with their yoke upon the shoulders.
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