among
nations as among individuals. Her conversation, at home and abroad, had
the vulgar self-assertiveness of the parvenu, and turned always and
wholly upon her own greatness. And her conduct has been the echo of her
conversation. She has persuaded herself that she has a monopoly of
power, of wisdom, and of knowledge, and deserves to rule the earth. Of
the magnitude and far-reaching nature of her imperialist ambitions, we
have said something in a previous chapter. She had as yet failed to
realise any of these vaulting schemes, but she had not for that reason
abandoned any of them, and she kept her clever and insidious
preparations on foot in every region of the world upon which her
acquisitive eyes had rested. But the exasperation of her steady failure
to achieve the place in the world which she had marked out as her due
had driven her rulers more and more definitely to contemplate, and
prepared her people to uphold, a direct challenge to all her rivals.
The object of this challenge was to win for Germany her due share in
the non-European world, her 'place in the sun.' Her view of what that
share must be was such that it could not be attained without the
overthrow of all her European rivals, and this would bring with it the
lordship of the world. It must be all or nothing. Though not quite
realising this alternative, the mind of Germany was not afraid of it.
She was in the mood to make a bold attempt, if need be, to grasp even
the sceptre of world-supremacy. The world could not believe that any
sane people could entertain such megalomaniac visions; not even the
events of the decade 1904-14 were enough to bring conviction; it needed
the tragedy and desolation of the war to prove at once their reality
and their folly. For they were folly even if they could be momentarily
realised. They sprang from the traditions of Prussia, which seemed to
demonstrate that all things were possible to him who dared all, and
scrupled nothing, and calculated his chances and his means with
precision. By force and fraud the greatness of Prussia had been built;
by force and fraud Prussia-Germany had become the leading state of
Europe, feared by all her rivals and safe from all attack. Force and
fraud appeared to be the determining factors in human affairs; even the
philosophers of Germany devoted their powers to justifying and
glorifying them. By force and fraud, aided by science, Germany should
become the leader of the world, and perhaps its