I Am mad with rage… I would like to kill a million Germans — two million.” D. H. Lawrence's somewhat negative view of our European neighbors is probably quite typical of the average Englishman during the years leading up to the First World War. However, what is perhaps not quite so typical is that he based his view on firsthand experience of German militarism rather than on mere stereotypes. This experience he gained from his 1912 visit to Metz with Frieda Weekley, with whom he was having a clandestine affair, and whose family still lived there. Their “just good friends” cover was (unsurprisingly) blown when Lawrence wrote to Weekley's husband, Professor Ernest Weekley, revealing all — and when he was almost arrested as an English spy: