ly attempted to
counteract. The admission raised legitimate indignation in Germany. It
was ill-advised. It was calculated to intensify the very animosity
which it deprecated. But the fact itself, the existence of the
animosity, could not be disputed. After all, the Kaiser ought to know
the feelings, if not of the majority of his subjects, at least of
those ruling classes with whom he comes in contact."

III.--WAR THE GERMAN IDEAL AND THE GERMAN IDOL.

"Contemporary German philosophy is a 'war philosophy.' In France we
may find isolated thinkers, like Joseph de Maistre, who are the
apostles of war, who maintain that war is a Divine and providential
institution, one of the eternal verities. In Germany the paradoxes of
de Maistre are the commonplaces of historians and moralists. To an
Englishman war is a dwindling force, an anachronism. It may still
sometimes be a necessity, a _dura lex_, an _ultima ratio_, but it is
always a monstrous calamity. In other words, to an Englishman war is
evil, war is _immoral_. On the contrary, to the German war is
essentially moral. Indeed, it is the source of the highest morality,
of the most valuable virtues, and without war the human race would
speedily degenerate. It is the mainspring of national progress. There
are three causes which have ensured the present greatness of the
German Empire: moral virtue in the individual, political unity, and
economic prosperity. If we were to believe modern theorists, Germany
owes all three to the beneficent action of war. Germany is not
indebted for its culture to the genius of its writers or artists, but
to the iron and blood of its statesmen and warriors. It is the
glorious triumvirate of Bismarck, Moltke, and von Roon who have been
the master-builders of the Vaterland.

Our main contention is, that as the pacific philosophy of Herder and
Kant, of Goethe and Lessing, provides the key to the old Germany
described in Madame de Stael's masterpiece, even so the military
philosophy of Mommsen and Treitschke, of Bismarck and Nietzsche, gives
us the key of modern Prussianized Germany. The whole German people
have become Bismarckian, and believe that it is might which creates
right. The whole of the younger generation have become Nietzschean in
politics, and believe in the will to power--_der Wille zur Macht_.
That political philosophy is to-day the living and inspiring ideal
which informs German policy. And it is that philosophy which we have
to keep