read for her
sixty-five million inhabitants, for all of which she has made
provision; but the day will come when her granaries will be empty and
her tanks dry. How will she refill them? War, as she practises it,
makes frightful havoc of her warriors. Yet here again replenishment is
impossible, no aid will come from without, because an enterprise
launched with the object of imposing German rule, German "culture,"
German products, only interests and ever will only interest what is
already German. Such is the situation of Germany confronted by a
France who is keeping her credit intact and her ports open, who is
procuring herself victual and munitions as she pleases, who reinforces
her armies with all that her allies bring to her support, and who can
count on the ever more active sympathy of the civilized world because
her cause is that of humanity itself.

Still this is only material force, the force which is seen. What can
we say of moral force, the force which is not seen, which yet matters
most since it can in a certain degree make good what is lacking of
the other, and without which the other is worthless?

The moral energy of nations, as of individuals, is only sustained by
an ideal higher than themselves, and stronger than themselves, to
which they cling firmly when they feel their courage waver. Where is
the ideal of the Germany of to-day? The time when her philosophers
proclaimed the inviolability of right, the eminent dignity of the
person, the duty of mutual respect among nations, is no more. Germany,
militarized by Prussia, has cast aside those noble ideas, ideas she
received for the most part from the France of the eighteenth century
and of the Revolution. She has made for herself a new soul, or rather
she has meekly accepted the soul Bismarck has given her. To him has
been attributed the famous maxim "Might is right." But in truth
Bismarck never pronounced it, for he had well guarded himself against
a distinction of right from might. Right was simply in his view what
is willed by the strongest, what is consigned by the conqueror in the
law he imposes on the conquered. In that is summed up his whole
morality. Germany to-day knows no other. She, too, worships brute
force. And because she believes herself the strongest, she is
altogether absorbed in self-adoration. Her energy comes from her
pride. Her moral force is only the confidence which her material force
inspires in her. And this means that in this respec