informed, contain a superman, unless it be Bernard Shaw!
English people have to import "beyond good and evil" philosophy, and as
historians of thought Profs. Eucken and Haeckel must know that it has
never had a foothold there. Had it been "brutal national egoism, knowing
no rights of others," which motivated Britain, she would not now have
gone to war--in order that she might profit finally by the inevitable
exhaustion of the Continent. And having taken the clear stand she has,
what but good-will and the consciousness of a just cause brought support
and sacrifice from the hands and lives of her grateful peoples all over
the earth? Would brutality have done it? The same question might be
asked concerning France's empire from which she derives chiefly the
consciousness of an extending civilization.

The Claims of German Culture.

A word more should be added concerning the condescending tone generally
of the exponents of German culture and more specifically that of the
distinguished writers of the circular letter. They had up to the present
continued to hope for growth in English literary and scientific
development. Before this dismal egoism got the upper hand the English
people really and truly possessed some noble traits and so forth. As for
Russian culture, supposedly including its science and literature, music,
architecture and the rest, it is all effaced by a single "barbarism"!
The implication of such an attitude and such words is that the Kremlin
or Rheims, Shakespeare and Rembrandt, Michaelangelo, Darwin, Spinoza and
the treasures of Louvain might be easily paralleled or surpassed by
German cathedrals, German sculpture, German paintings, German literature
and so forth. It is not our present purpose to dispute the claim, but
only to remind the Teutons that in France and Belgium they have declared
war, not indeed upon supermen, but upon many gentlemen and some worthy
fruits of their spirits, and that they have destroyed much which
formerly enriched the life of the world.

It is the claim of some objective German writers that a modicum of
modesty would prove the most substantial contribution to Teutonic
civilization. Defeat of German arms might, therefore, prove a blessing
to the self-lauded culture as well as call a halt to the brutal science
of Krupps. As instances of authors mentioned above, a passage from the
lamented Friedrich Paulsen's "System der Ethic" (Page 582) may, justly,
be cited: "Insolence still co