the Teutonic Knights, it is the warrior dynasty of
the Hohenzollern, who have built up Prussian power. That purely
military growth of the Prussian State is made by Treitschke into a
universal rule of all political growth. According to him war always
was and will remain the master-builder of national life. Other
thinkers, like Joseph de Maistre, have glorified war in the name of
theology. Treitschke extols it in the name of politics. War not only
makes a State: it makes the citizen. The heroic virtues are warlike
virtues; they are the outcome of military institutions. It is not war
but peace which is the evil. Woe to the nation which allows itself to
be deceived by the sentiment and cowardice of pacifists.

XVIII.--THE MONARCHY AS THE IDEAL FORM OF GOVERNMENT.

War is the essential activity of the State. But in order to be strong
in war, unity and concentration are essential; they are the conditions
of victory. That unity may, no doubt, be achieved under any form of
government. It may be achieved under a republic, as it was during the
wars of the French Revolution. It may be achieved under an
aristocracy, as in the case of Great Britain, which is a monarchy only
in name, which, in reality, is a Parliamentary oligarchy, and which is
always waging some guerilla in some outlying post of empire. But the
fact remains that unity can be best achieved under a monarchic form of
government, which concentrates all powers into the hands of the
responsible monarch. That is why monarchy is the best form of
government.

XIX.--THE ARISTOCRACY AS THE MAINSTAY OF THE MONARCHIC STATE.

A loyal military aristocracy like the Junkers is the mainstay of a
national monarchy. An aristocratic constitution of the State is in
conformity with the nature of things. Not only all military activities
but all social and economic life depends on the distinction of
classes, on the existence of different grades corresponding to a
difference in natural endowment, in social service. The equality of
man not only is an unattainable ideal, it is also an undesirable and a
mischievous ideal. Suppress inequality and distinctions and honours
and you suppress the main stimulus of human endeavour; you suppress
that rich differentiation of social life, that generous rivalry, that
noble ambition, which are the conditions of all intensive human
activity.

XX.--THE FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY DOGMA OF EQUALITY.

The greatest danger, therefore, to the monarchic and a