al Democrats at
the outbreak of the war. It explains the paradoxical fact that to-day
von Bethmann-Hollweg in his tragic isolation is only supported by
Scheidemann and the Socialist majority. The failure is not due to any
lack of numbers. For the Social Democrats had millions of devoted
followers. The failure is not due to lack of organization, for the
Social Democrats were the most admirably organized party known to
modern history. It was not due to lack of discipline, for the Social
Democrats were subjected to an iron discipline. The failure is
entirely due to a lack of spirit, and the lack of spirit itself is
entirely due to the sinister and dreary Marxian creed. Between Marxian
Socialism and Prussianism there is no opposition of principles.
Indeed, one might almost say that the present war socialism, with its
bread rations, its organization of industry, its suppression of every
individual liberty, its hundred thousand regulations, is the nearest
approach to the ideal of the Marxist.

But as the result of the war, that Gospel according to St. Marx is
totally and finally discredited. It is now admitted that the
Socialists have been mere voting machines and doctrinaire
opportunists. It is admitted that no democracy can be built with such
ignoble material. It is admitted that, relinquishing the servile and
materialistic Socialism of Marx, we must revert to the heroic
conception of the British, French, and Italian Revolutions. It is
admitted that the salvation of a people cannot be attained by the mere
mumbling of catchwords and the waving of red flags; that it cannot be
attained by the mere proclamation of an iron law of wages; that it can
only be achieved by the display of an iron courage and by miracles of
heroism and self-sacrifice.

VI.

But again granting that the German Socialist creed is partly
responsible for the failure of German Democracy, it will be objected
that this creed is a typically German creed. Granting that the spirit
of heroism and sacrifice is an essential condition of any successful
revolution, it will be objected that it is precisely this heroism
which is lacking in the German temperament and in the German race. In
a famous passage of his "Governance of England," Chancellor Fortescue,
who wrote about the time of the Wars of the Roses, comparing the large
number of crimes of violence and burglary in England with the small
number of such crimes in France and Scotland, concluded that neither