he does not go further ahead than
the due distance between a leader and his followers; he is never
isolated, as were those great forerunners who remained throughout life
cloistered in prophetic visions, centuries away from realisation; his
ideals are no more than a day in advance of those cherished by his
contemporaries.

A German republican, he looks no higher for the moment than the
political ideals of Young America, the America of 1917, in which
(according to Nicolai) "we can see, not merely what this new, so to
speak, cosmopolitan, patriotism means, but also the limits which must
still be imposed on it.... The day for the brotherhood of man has not
yet come [we quote Nicolai, remember]; the time is not yet ripe. There
is still too profound a cleavage between White, Yellow, and Black. It is
in America that European patriotism has awakened, the sentiment which
will undoubtedly be the patriotism of the near future, and whose heralds
we would fain be.... The new Europe is already born, though not in
Europe."[72]

In these lines we discern Nicolai's limitations, which any eighteenth
century cosmopolitan would have over-stepped. In the practical domain,
our author is essentially, uniquely, but absolutely, a European. It was
to Europeans that he addressed his Manifesto of October, 1914, and his
book of 1915.

"It seems to us necessary before everything else," he writes, "that
there should be a union of all who are in any way attached to European
civilisation, that is to say, who are what Goethe once almost
prophetically called 'good Europeans.'" And in a note he adds: "By
European civilisation I mean every endeavour, in the broadest sense of
the word, throughout the world, the origin of which can ultimately be
traced back to Europe."

Much might be said concerning this curtailment. For my own part, I
consider it neither right nor useful that humanity should draw a line of
demarcation between civilisation of European origin and the lofty
civilisations of Asia. In my view, the harmonious realisation of
humanity can be secured in no other way than by the union of these great
complementary forces. Nay more; I believe that the European soul,
unaided, impoverished and scorched by centuries of spendthrift
existence, would be likely to flicker and even to go out, unless
regenerated by an influx of the thought of other races.--But to each day
its own task. Nicolai, at once thinker and man of action, turns to the
most immediat