ace-movement a rather lukewarm support.

In Germany there was no internal anarchy, such as prevailed in England;
there was also no illusion about the imminence of war. Our politicians
ought to have read the signs of the times better; but they were too
intent on feeling the pulse of the electorate at home to attend to
disturbing and unwelcome symptoms abroad. The causes of the war are not
difficult to determine. War has long been a national industry of
Germany, and the idea of it evoked no moral repugnance. The military
virtues were extolled; the military profession enjoyed an astonishing
social prestige; the learned class proclaimed the biological necessity
of international conflicts. The army believed itself to be invincible,
and it had begun to control the policy of the country; where these two
conditions exist, no diplomacy can avert war. Professionalism always has
a selfish and anti-social element in its code, and the professionalism
of the soldier is always prone to override the rights and disdain the
scruples of civilians.

The dominant classes in Germany also found that their power was being
undermined by the growing industrialisation. The steady increase in the
social-democratic vote was a portent not to be disregarded. A letter
from a German officer to a friend in Roumania, which found its way into
the newspapers, tells a great deal of truth in a few words. 'You cannot
conceive,' he wrote, 'what difficulty we had in persuading our Emperor
that it was necessary to let loose this war. But it has been done; and I
hope that for a long time to come we shall hear no more in Germany of
pacifism, internationalism, democracy, and similar pestilent doctrines.'
Sir Charles Walston, in his thoughtful book 'Aristodemocracy,' lays
great stress on this. 'It appeared to me,' he says, 'ever since 1905,
that in the immediate future it was all a question as to whether the
labour-men, the practical pacifists, would arrive at the realisation of
their power before the militarists had forced a war upon us, or whether
the military powers would anticipate this result, and within the next
few years force a war upon the world.' To the influence of the military
was added the cupidity of the commercial and financial class. The law of
diminishing returns was driving capital further and further afield; and
large profits, it was hoped, might be made by the exploitation of
backward countries and the reduction of their inhabitants to serfdom. T