nt to this outpouring of conceit.
All the great nations had passed through the fever of Imperialism. The
Greeks aspired to world-rule because they were the most civilized and
believed themselves the most fit to give civilization to the rest of
mankind. The Romans, upon conquering countries, implanted law and the
rule of justice. The French of the Revolution and the Empire justified
their invasions on the plea that they wished to liberate mankind and
spread abroad new ideas. Even the Spaniards of the sixteenth century,
when battling with half of Europe for religious unity and the
extermination of heresy, were working toward their ideals obscure and
perhaps erroneous, but disinterested.

All the nations of history had been struggling for something which they
had considered generous and above their own interests. Germany alone,
according to this professor, was trying to impose itself upon the
world in the name of racial superiority--a superiority that nobody had
recognized, that she was arrogating to herself, coating her affirmations
with a varnish of false science.

"Until now wars have been carried on by the soldiery," continued
Hartrott. "That which is now going to begin will be waged by a
combination of soldiers and professors. In its preparation the
University has taken as much part as the military staff. German
science, leader of all sciences, is united forever with what the Latin
revolutionists disdainfully term militarism. Force, mistress of the
world, is what creates right, that which our truly unique civilization
imposes. Our armies are the representatives of our culture, and in a
few weeks we shall free the world from its decadence, completely
rejuvenating it."

The vision of the immense future of his race was leading him on to
expose himself with lyrical enthusiasm. William I, Bismarck, all the
heroes of past victories, inspired his veneration, but he spoke of them
as dying gods whose hour had passed. They were glorious ancestors of
modest pretensions who had confined their activities to enlarging the
frontiers, and to establishing the unity of the Empire, afterwards
opposing themselves with the prudence of valetudinarians to the
daring of the new generation. Their ambitions went no further than a
continental hegemony . . . but now William II had leaped into the arena,
the complex hero that the country required.

"Lamprecht, my master, has pictured his greatness. It is tradition and
the future, method and