he will deserve it. _Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht_ (World
history is world judgment). History is not a conflict between
abstractions, between truth and error, between higher and lower
principles, between conflicting ideals; it is, above all, the tragic
conflict between higher and lower races. War is necessary and war is
beneficial. War is not only the instrument, it is also the criterion,
of progress. "Might is Right" ceases to be an immoral principle.
"Might is Right" is the ultimate formula of the most sublime morality,
for Might is but the Right of the strong to establish the rule of the
noble over the ignoble elements of humanity.

CHAPTER XI

A SLUMP IN GERMAN THEOLOGY

I.

In the universal readjustment--or, to use the favourite expression of
Nietzsche, in the "transvaluation"--of political and spiritual values
which must follow the war, we may confidently expect a general slump
in all German values. There will be a slump in German education and in
German erudition, in German music and in German watering-places. There
will be a slump in that "exclusive morality" for which Lord Haldane
could not find an equivalent in the English language, and for which,
in his famous Montreal address, he could only find an equivalent in
the German word _Sittlichkeit_. But, most important of all, there will
be a lamentable slump in the most highly prized of all German
values--German theology.

Germany may still retain a monopoly of toys; Germany may still
continue to supply Princes to the vacant thrones of Europe; but it is
eminently probable that God Almighty will cease to be made in the
Vaterland.

II.

No one who has not been brought up in a Scottish Presbyterian
University atmosphere realizes the mystical prestige hitherto enjoyed
by German theology. The education of a Scottish divine was thought
incomplete, a graduate in divinity, however brilliant and devout,
could not get an important charge, if he had not received the hallmark
and consecration of a German theological faculty. And what was true of
German Universities was equally true of German theological books.
Publishers like Messrs. Clark, of Edinburgh, and Messrs. Williams and
Norgate, of London, made considerable fortunes merely from their
translations of German works of divinity.

The prejudice in favour of German Universities and against French
Universities goes back to the early days of the Reformation. Already
in "Hamlet" we find the s