ainly, however, a reaction against certain Germanic
influences will be apparent after the war ends, for the world will not
want ever to risk repetition of the horrors of this struggle, and it
will be plain that they were the inevitable fruit of Germany's attempt
at intellectual domination.

"This German assumption was due, largely, to their victory in 1870, but
it went far beyond the bounds of reason, far beyond the fields in which
German achievement really had established legitimate supremacy.

"The momentum of victory often has led humanity into excess. It led
Germany into excessive claims of social superiority and into an
excessive assumption of intellectual supremacy. Even in the eyes of
others it gave Germany an unwarranted intellectual prestige.

"Really, the German is not a big thinker; he is an immensely careful
thinker.

"Above everything, the German is an observer--a very diligent
observer--and his mental eyes are likely to be so close to the wall
that he sees only a single brick in it, wholly failing to get a
comprehensive view of the whole structure.

"Germans are very careful students. They attach a vast importance to
detail. I think it is not unfair to say that, with the German, the
smaller, the more minute the detail, the more it interests him. The
German loves to write a big book on a small subject, and, loving it, he
does it well.

"But there are more exalted tasks, as, for example, the writing of big
books upon big subjects, giving the world fresh visions of new and
far-flung vistas. The German loves to catalogue and catalogues almost
with genius; he loves to deliver long lectures upon microcosms.

"Cataloguing and the near-sightedness which may arise from intense study
of the atom, to the exclusion of the collective organism, whether that
collective organism be the human individual or the social mass, may
render immense service to the world, but it never will be the only
service necessary, and, if pursued to the exclusion of all other
investigations, such study is likely to produce an aggravated narrowness
of vision. Narrow vision is certain to eventuate in selfishness.

"The Germans became selfish after this fashion. The present struggle is
the war of selfishness against world advance.

"Innumerable, or at least many, individuals have furnished smaller
parallels to the course which Germany has taken as a nation. The
individual with the truly and exclusively scientific mind is likely to
go