t would humble
France to the dust and make Belgium a part of Germany, thus giving her a
chance to seize the colonies of France and Belgium, Germany would at
once attain a position in the world's affairs which would enable her to
challenge the power of any nation on earth.

THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST.--German thinkers carried to an extreme
the theory of the survival of the fittest. This doctrine teaches that
all living things have reached their present forms through a gradual
development of those qualities which best fit them to live in their
present surroundings. Those that are best adapted live on, and produce a
new generation that are also well fitted to survive. Those that are not
fitted to their surroundings soon give up the struggle and die. The
Germans applied this same belief to nations, and claimed that only those
nations survived that could successfully meet world conditions. They
believed that war was an inevitable world condition, and that that
nation would survive that was best able to fight. They believed in war,
because they believed that just as nature removes the weak animal or
plant by an early death, so the weak nation should pay the penalty of
its weakness by being defeated in war and absorbed by the stronger one.
War would prove which nation was the most nearly perfect. The Germans
had no doubt that this nation was Germany. Acceptance of this belief by
the German people had much to do with bringing on the present war.

GERMANY WANTED TO GERMANIZE THE WORLD.--As a result of the reasoning
outlined in the last paragraph, German writers taught that those things
which were German--their speech, their literature, their religion,
their armies, in short the manners, customs, and thoughts of the
Germans--were the best possible manners, and customs, and thoughts.
These things all taken together are what is meant by _Kultur_
(kool-toor'),--not merely "culture" as the latter word is generally
used.

Since the Germans believed that their _Kultur_ was the highest stage of
human progress, the next step, according to the view of their leaders,
would be to Germanize all the rest of the nations of the earth by
imposing German _Kultur_ upon them. If possible, this was to be brought
about with the consent of the other nations; if not, then it was to be
imposed by force.

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY.--1. Locate Antwerp, Rotterdam,
Hamburg, Bremen, East Prussia, Alsace-Lorraine. 2. Show on an
outline map the r