n Imperial Rome.

No fiction is more palpably contradicted by history than that relied on
by the school to which von Bernhardi belongs--that culture, literary,
scientific, and artistic, flourishes best in great military States. The
decay of art and literature in the Roman world began just when Rome's
military power had made that world one great and ordered State. The
opposite view would be much nearer the truth, though one must admit that
no general theory regarding the relations of art and letters to
Governments and political conditions has ever yet been proved to be
sound.

[_Note--Gen. von Bernhardi's knowledge of current history may be
estimated by the fact that he assumes_ (1) _that trade rivalry
makes war probable between Great Britain and the United States;_
(2) _that he believes that the Indian princes and peoples are
likely to revolt against Great Britain should she be involved in
war, and_ (3) _that he expects her self-governing colonies to take
such an opportunity of severing their connection with her._]

The world is already too uniform and is becoming more uniform every day.
A few leading languages, a few forms of civilization, a few types of
character, are spreading out from the seven or eight greatest States and
extinguishing weaker languages, forms, and types. Although great States
are stronger and more populous, their peoples are not necessarily more
gifted, and the extinction of the minor languages and types would be a
misfortune for the world's future development.

We may not be able to arrest the forces which seem to be making for that
extinction, but we certainly ought not strengthen them. Rather we ought
to maintain and defend the smaller States and to favor the rise and
growth of new peoples. Not merely because they were delivered from the
tyranny of Sultans like Abdul Hamid did the intellect of Europe welcome
the successively won liberations of Greece, Servia, Bulgaria, and
Montenegro; it was also in the hope that those countries would in time
develop out of their present crude conditions new types of culture, new
centres of productive intellectual life.

Gen. von Bernhardi invokes history as the ultimate court of appeal. He
appeals to Caesar; to Caesar let him go. "Die Weltgeschichte ist das
Weltgericht", ("World history is world tribunal.") History declares that
no nation, however great, is entitled to try to impose its type of
civilization on others. No