chivalry and generosity, of sympathy
and humanity. It involves a complete repudiation of Christianity, which
breaks down all barriers by ignoring them, and insists on love and
justice towards all mankind without distinction. The worship of the
State has during the last half-century been sedulously and artificially
fostered in Germany, until it has produced a kind of moral insanity.
Even philosophical historians like Troeltsch seem unable to see the
monstrosity of a political doctrine which has caused his country to be
justly regarded as the enemy of the whole human race. Eucken, writing
some years before the war, in a rather gingerly manner deprecates
_Politismus_ as a national danger; but he does not dare to grasp the
nettle firmly. It is possible that this deification of the State in
Germany may be in part due to an unsatisfied instinct of worship. In
Roman Catholic countries, where there must be a divided allegiance,
patriotism never, perhaps, assumes such sinister and fanatical forms.

But we shall not understand the attraction which this naked immoralism
in international affairs exercises over the minds of many who are not
otherwise ignoble, if we do not remember that the repudiation of the
Christian ethical standard has been equally thorough in commercial
competition. The German officer believes himself to have chosen a
morally nobler profession than that of the business-man; he serves (he
thinks) a larger cause, and he is content with much less personal
reward. Socialist assailants of our industrial system, much as they
dislike war, would probably agree with him. It is not necessary to
condemn all competition. The desire to excel others is not
reprehensible, when the rivalry is in rendering useful social service.
But it cannot be denied that the present condition of industry is such
that a heavy premium is offered to mere cupidity; that the fraternal
social life which Christianity enjoins is often literally impossible,
except at the cost of economic suicide; and that in a competitive system
a business man is, by the very force of circumstances, a warrior, though
war is an enemy of love and destructive of Christian society. When the
object of bargaining is to give as little and gain as much as possible,
the Christian standard of values has been rejected as completely as it
was by Machiavelli himself. The competition between two parties to a
bargain is often a competition in unserviceableness. Money is very
freque