Thus everything has worked for the aggrandizement of the future Kings of Prussia, everything has brought grist to the mill of Sans-Souci.

IV.—A DYNASTY OF UPSTARTS.

No dynasts in modern times, not even the Bourbons nor the Habsburgs, have been more obsessed with the pride of race. A double avenue of gaudy statues in Berlin has been erected in the Siegesallee, or Alley of Victory, to illustrate the glories of the House. And Carlyle, in his "History of Frederick the Great," devotes a whole volume—and a very tedious volume—to the medieval ancestors of the dynasty. The present Kaiser believes himself to be the lineal successor, not only of the Hohenstaufen, but of the Caesars of Ancient Rome. It was in that spirit that he was graciously pleased recently to dedicate a monument to his predecessor, Emperor Trajan! Trajano Romanorum Imperatori, Wilhelmus Imperator Germanorum! (To Trajan, Emperor of the Romans, William, Emperor of the Germans!)

But all that Hohenstaufen-Hohenzollern genealogy is mythical history. The real history of the Hohenzollern is of recent date, and begins in 1640 with the advent of the Great Elector (1640-1688). Compared with the ancient House of Habsburg or of Bourbon, the Hohenzollern may well be called the "parvenus" of royalty. Until the seventeenth century the Electors of Brandenburg were twice vassals—lieges of the Holy Roman Empire and vassals of the Kings of Poland; and when in 1701 the first Hohenzollern King promoted himself to royal rank and ascended the throne, he made ceaseless and humiliating attempts to secure recognition. The old Houses refused to accept his title, and would not acknowledge the upstart royal "brother."

But the very fact that the Hohenzollern are the "parvenus" of European royalty has spurred them on to more strenuous endeavours and to still higher ambitions. Their sole endeavour was to raise their position: sich considerable machen, as the Great Elector said in his quaint pidgin German. They were not born to the royal dignity. They had to make it. They were not accepted as Kings. They had to assert themselves and to impose their claims. The good sword of Frederick the Great asserted his claims with such results that, except Napoleon, no ruler ever since has disputed the right of the Hohenzollern to rank amongst the dynasts of Europe.

V.—PRUSSIA AS AN UPSTART STATE.

Even as the Hohenzollern are an upstart dynasty, so the Prussian State may be called an upstart State. It has not, like France, Great Britain, or Spain, two thousand years of history behind it. Until the end of the Middle Ages Christian civilization was bounded by the Elbe. The Prussian populations were the last in Europe to be converted to Christianity, and recent history has proved only too conclusively that the conversion never struck deep roots. Until the end of the Middle Ages the religious and military Order of the Teutonic Knights had to wage war against the Prussian heathen, and the magnificent ruin of Marienburg, the stately seat of the Teutonic Knights, still testifies to the achievements of the Order. Marienburg is the only historic city of Prussia; Berlin is but a mushroom growth of modern days. Whilst London and Paris go back to the beginning of European history, Berlin only three hundred years ago was a mean village inhabited by Wendish savages.

It cannot be sufficiently emphasized that Prussia is not a nation, but a State, and that State is an entirely artificial creation. France and Great Britain are the slow and natural growths of many centuries. They have definite geographical boundaries, their people have common traditions, common ideals, common affinities. The Prussian State is made up of a heterogeneous mosaic of provinces, the spoils of successive invasions. What hold together the artificial fabric of the Prussian State are only the dynasty, the bureaucracy, and the Army. The bureaucracy and the Army are to Prussia what the Civil Service and the British Army are to the Indian Empire. Suppress the British Army and the Civil Service, and British rule ceases to exist. Suppress the Hohenzollern dynasty, the Prussian bureaucracy, and the Junker Army, and the Prussian structure crumbles to pieces.

Nature has been niggardly to Prussia. Everything has had to be made with the hands of man. Brandenburg, Pomerania, Western and Eastern Prussia are dreary wastes; Berlin is an oasis of brick and stone amidst a Sahara of sand. The provinces of old Prussia have few industrial resources. The very soil had to be made by intensive agricultural methods. The very population had to be imported. Modern Prussia is neither the gift of Nature nor the outcome of history. It is the triumph of human statecraft. It is the achievement of the "will to power." When that "will to power" relaxes the Prussian State collapses.

VI.—THE PRUSSIAN STATE IS NOT A GERMAN STATE.

The modern Holy German Empire is born of the unholy nuptials of the German people with the Prussian State. But the paradox is that the Prussian State, which claims the right to rule the German States, who themselves assert their right to rule over Europe, cannot even pretend to be German. The contrast between the German and the Prussian has often been pointed out.

The Southern and Western German is still to-day, as he was in the days of Madame de Stael, artistic and poetic, brilliant and imaginative—a lover of song and music. The Prussian remains as he has always been, inartistic, dull, and unromantic. Prussia has not produced one of the great composers who are the pride of the German race; and Berlin, with all its wealth and its two million inhabitants, strikes the foreigner as one of the most commonplace capitals of the civilized world. The Southern and Western German is gay and genial, courteous and expansive; the Prussian is sullen, reserved, and aggressive. The Southern and Western German is sentimental and generous; the Prussian is sour and dour, and only believes in hard fact. The Southern and Western German is an idealist; the Prussian is a realist and a materialist, a stern rationalist, who always keeps his eye on the main chance. The Southern and Western German is independent almost to the verge of anarchism; he has a strong individuality; his patriotism is municipal and parochial; he is attached to his little city, to its peculiarities and local customs; the Prussian is imitative, docile, and disciplined; his patriotism is not the sentimental love of the native city, but the abstract loyalty to the State. The Southern and Western German is proud of his romantic history, of his ancient culture; the Prussian has no culture to be proud of.

That contrast of temperament between Prussians and Germans corresponds to a difference of race. The Prussians are not really Teutons. They are alien intruders. The Prussians, the Pruzi or Pruteni, are Lithuanians. The population of Brandenburg is Slav. Berlin, Brandenburg, or Brannybor, are Slav-Wendish names. The ruler of the Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg, a State which is even more Prussian than Prussia, and which is a strange survival of feudalism, bears until this day the name of "Prince of the Wendes."

Century after century the Burgraves of Brandenburg and Kings of Prussia had to attract colonists to their dreary dominions. The recruiting sergeant went out all over Europe to fill the ranks of the Prussian Army. One-third of Frederick the Great's Army was made up of foreigners. Frederick the Great on his accession found himself at war with the Prince-Bishop of Liege, because that worthy prelate would not allow his subjects to be impressed by the Prussian press-gang. Prussian colonizing agents scoured the neighbouring countries for agricultural labourers, foresters, and artisans. Twenty thousand Bohemians were imported by the Sergeant-King. In the eighteenth century by far the most important element introduced into Prussia was of French origin. The majority of the French Huguenots of the lower classes were attracted to Prussia. The population of Berlin, which was only 6,000, was doubled by the French exodus. The very language spoken at Berlin was a savoury mixture of French and German. Ein plus machen meant in the language of the Grand Elector to have a surplus revenue. To express his ideal of kingship, the Elector said: Ich stabilire die souverainete auf einen rocher von Bronce. Dem Regiment obligat expressed the obligation of military service. At the accession of Frederick the Great, out of a population of 2,400,000, 600,000 were refugees. It is one of the most impressive instances of historical retribution that modern Prussia should thus have been built up with the assistance of French exiles, and that modern France should have been crushed by the descendants of the French Protestants who were expelled by the bigotry of Louis XIV.

The colonization of Prussia has proceeded until this day. Before the war immigration into Germany was exceeding the emigration. Polish labour continues to migrate to the Eastern provinces. Hence the odious expropriations of Polish land in the district of Posen. The ablest literary and industrial and political talent from all parts of Germany has been attracted for generations to the Prussian capital. Prussian jingoes claim for Prussia the credit of every administrative improvement, of every political achievement of modern Germany. As a matter of fact, the Prussian State has achieved little by itself. Its originality is never to initiate, but skilfully to exploit the creations of others. It is a safe rule to assume that every statesman or leader who has made an original contribution to Prussian history is not of Prussian origin. The greatest philosopher of Prussia, Kant, was a Scotsman. Her greatest statesman, Stein, was a Westphalian. Of the two greatest Prussian Generals, one, Bluecher, was a Mecklenburger; the other, Moltke, was a Dane. The national historian of Prussia, Treitschke, is a Saxon of Bohemian descent.

VII.—PRUSSIA AS A MILITARY STATE.

That colony of many heterogeneous populations is above all a military State, a Kriegstaat. It was created through war and has been organized for war. In the eighteenth century the whole of Prussia was one vast camp and barracks. The King of Prussia is primarily the Kriegsherr, or war-lord. The ruling caste of Junkers is a caste of warriors. The very schoolmasters in the eighteenth century were nearly all recruited from the invalided non-commissioned officers. Historians single out Fat William, the Sergeant-King, as the supreme type of the martinet King. But it is not only Fat William, but all the Kings of Prussia who have been martinet Kings and recruiting sergeants. Prussia has made war into an exact science. Prussia has created the "nation in arms."

Geographical conditions and the ambitions of the Hohenzollern have combined to make war a permanent necessity. Prussia was a "mark" or frontier land, and the margraves or mark-grafs were the earls and protectors of the Mark. The frontiers of Prussia were open on every side. She was surrounded by enemies. George William, the father of the Great Elector, during the Thirty Years' War tried to maintain neutrality. He soon found out that neutrality did not pay, and his territory was overrun by hostile bands. Pomerania was occupied and retained by the Swedes. Poles, Russians, and Austrians in turn invaded the country. After the Battle of Kunersdorff, in 1761, Prussia was at her last gasp, and Frederick the Great found himself in so desperate a position that he had resolved on committing suicide. Again, after Jena, Berlin was occupied by the French, and for five years remained under the yoke. Insecurity has been for generations the law of Prussian existence. The Prussian State has known many ups and downs and has passed through many tragic vicissitudes. They managed to turn geographical and military necessities to the advantage of their dynastic ambitions. What was at first commanded by the instinct of self-preservation became afterwards a habit, a tradition, and a systematic policy. They discovered that the best way to maintain an efficient defensive was to transform it into a vigorous offensive. They discovered that the best means of living safely was to live dangerously. They discovered, in the words of Treitschke, that "the one mortal sin for a State was to be weak."

VIII.—PRUSSIA AS A PREDATORY STATE.

Not only is Prussia a military State, it is also a predatory State. All the great Powers of Europe have been in a sense military States. But to them all war has only been a means to an end, and often a means to higher and unselfish ends. The Spaniards were a military nation, but their wars were crusades against the Moor. The Russians have been a military nation, but their wars were crusades against the Turk or wars for the liberation of the Serbians, the Bulgarians, and the Greeks. The French have been a military nation, but they fought for a chivalrous ideal, for adventure, for humanity. Even Napoleon's wars of conquest were really wars for the establishment of democracy. The Corsican was the champion and the testamentary executor of the French Revolution.

The peculiarity of the Prussian State is that it has been from the beginning a predatory State. The Hohenzollerns have ever waged war mainly for spoliation and booty. Not once have they waged war for an ideal or for a principle.

The German Kaiser delights to appear in the garb of the medieval knight. He wears three hundred appropriate uniforms. A German wit has said that he wears the uniform of an English Admiral when he visits an aquarium, and that he dons the uniform of an English Field-Marshal when he eats an English plum-pudding. Amongst those three hundred disguises there is none which is more popular in Germany than that of the Modern Lohengrin bestriding the world in glittering armour. The Kaiser lacks the democratic gift of humour, and does not seem to be aware of the incongruity of the Lohengrin masquerade. A Prussian King cannot honestly play the part of a knight in quest of the Holy Grail. Chivalry and Prussianism, the crusading spirit and the predatory spirit, are contradictory terms.

The most exalted Order of the Prussian dynast is the Order of the Black Eagle. The Hohenzollerns could not have chosen a more fitting emblem than that of the sinister bird of prey. For they have been pre-eminently the men of prey amongst modern dynasts. Every province of their dominions has been stolen from their neighbours. They secularized and stole the Church property of the Teutonic Order. They stole Silesia from Austria. They acquired Posen by murdering a noble nation. They stole Hanover from its lawful rulers. They stole Schleswig-Holstein from the Danes. They wrested Alsace-Lorraine from the French.

Circumstances in modern times seem to have singularly favoured their designs of conquest. To outward appearance they were threatened by powerful enemies, but those enemies looked far more formidable than they appeared. On the Far Western boundary, the feeble ecclesiastical Princes of Cologne, Treves, and Mayence ruled over the smiling fields and vineyards of the Rhine provinces. On every side Germany was broken up into petty principalities. The Holy Roman Empire of Germany, which was neither Holy nor Roman nor German, and which had ceased to be an empire, was only the shadow of a great name. Austria was perpetually distracted by internal and external dangers. Poland was an unruly republic. The very weakness of their neighbours was a temptation to the Hohenzollern.

The one redoubtable enemy to the Hohenzollern dynasty was Russia. But after the disastrous defeat of the Seven Years' War inflicted by Russian arms, Prussia learned to control by deceit and policy a Power which she dared not challenge, and could not hope to overcome, on the battlefield. From the middle of the eighteenth century Prussia concluded a dynastic alliance with the Russian dynasty. The Hohenzollerns liberally provided their Russian brethren with German Princes and Princesses. The Prince of Holstein, who became Tsar Peter III., was the first German Prince of the Romanov dynasty. The little Cinderella Princess of Anhalt-Zerbst, the future Catherine the Great, was the first of an uninterrupted line of German Princesses. The Teutonic barons of the Baltic provinces for one hundred and fifty years were able to control the Russian foreign policy. Nesselrode for forty years was the Foreign Minister of the Tsar, although he only spoke German and did not know a word of Russian. Nicholas I. and Alexander II., with unswerving loyalty, supported the interests of their Prussian brother-in-law and nephew.

On two occasions the Russian Tsars actually saved the Hohenzollern from complete destruction. In 1761, when Russian armies occupied Berlin, an apologetic Tsar begged to be forgiven for daring to vanquish his illustrious cousin. In 1807, at Tilsit, Prussia was only saved from dismemberment through the quixotic intervention of Tsar Alexander I. And the Russian Tsar proved so powerless against Prussian intrigues that, although Alexander I. had concluded a close alliance with Napoleon, the German-Russian Court at St. Petersburg boycotted Napoleon's Ambassador, Savary, and eventually succeeded in breaking the Franco-Russian coalition.

But the Hohenzollerns did not only wage a predatory war for conquest and spoliation. Their methods have been as predatory as their aims. War to them was not merely a policy. It was a business, and often a lucrative business. In the Middle Ages war had been largely a trade. A huge commerce in prisoners was transacted, and an enterprising Italian Condottiere would often recoup himself through the ransom of one single rich prisoner. The Prussians have continued those medieval methods until this day. Treitschke lays it down in his "Politik" that war must be made to pay, and need not exhaust a Prussian Treasury.

The poor Belgians to-day are learning to their cost the full meaning of those Prussian predatory methods. The Prussian invaders are extorting millions of money, as well as enormous food-supplies, from a starving people. They are dislocating whatever remains of the internal trade. They are breaking up thousands of miles of Belgian railways, and they are sending them to the Polish theatre of war. But, brutally as the poor Belgians have been treated, one shudders to think of the cruelty and the greed of the Prussian in the new conquered Russian territories, and of the pitiful plight of the Poles and the Lithuanians.

IX.—PRUSSIA AS A FEUDAL STATE.

Prussia in her fiscal and commercial policy may be called a typical modern State. The Hohenzollerns have been compelled to utilize all the resources of commerce and industry, not because they are liberal or progressive, but merely in order to increase the national revenue, in order to provide for an ever-swelling military expenditure. On the contrary, in her political constitution Prussia has remained a medieval and feudal State. She is the Paradise of the Junker. But Prussian Junkerthum is not merely a squirearchy of independent landowners. Mr. Bernard Shaw, in his "Common Sense about the War," in which one ounce of common sense is mixed with three ounces of nonsense, would make us believe that there is little difference between German Junkerthum and British Junkerthum, and that there is little to choose between the English Junker, Sir Edward Grey, and a Pomeranian squire. Mr. Shaw must have studied Prussian conditions to very little purpose when he makes so ludicrous a comparison. To call such a quiet, silent country gentleman, such a law-abiding Parliamentarian as Sir Edward Grey, to call even him a typical Prussian Junker is a travesty of the facts. A more striking contrast to the complete Junker of Pomerania than the "Complete Angler" of the Foreign Office could not well be imagined. The glorified Prussian Junker is Bismarck. The typical Junker is Prince Bluecher. A perfect modern type is that fiery Freiherr von Oldenburg, who advised the Kaiser to send a troop of Uhlans, as in the old Cromwellian days, to clear out the politicians of a disloyal Reichstag.

The Prussian Junkers are the lieges of the war-lord. They are all the more loyal to the throne as they are poor, and therefore dependent on the King for their very subsistence. There are few large estates in Prussia, and they yield but a meagre revenue. The relations of the Junkers to the Hohenzollerns are the relations of William the Conqueror to his companions-in-arms. The Junkers originally held their broad acres, their Rittergut, by military tenure. Some of their feudal privileges have gone, but they continue to be the leading political power in the State under the Kaiser's Majesty. They are the pillars of the throne. They owe military service. To recall the words of the Sergeant-King, they are "dem Regiment obligat." And they are rewarded for their military services by privileges innumerable. They are the controlling influence in the Landtag, which is a representative assembly only in name. They occupy the higher posts in the Civil Service and in the Diplomatic Service. In each district the Landrat is the supreme authority, the electioneering agent of the Government and the representative of the Prussian King.

And the Junker caste have been as selfish, as rapacious, as their Hohenzollern overlords. Nothing could be more sordid than their attitude in the recent campaign for financial reform. They have shifted the burden of taxation upon the weaker shoulders of the peasant and artisan. They have compelled von Buelow to reverse the Liberal Free Trade policy of Caprivi, and to impose heavy corn duties, merely to increase their own rents.

X.—PRUSSIA AS A DESPOTIC STATE.

In a military State like Prussia, which is mainly organized for war, where war is the vital function, not only does the King hold his power by the Divine right of the sword, but even in times of peace all political power is concentrated into his hands: "L'etat c'est moi!"

In such a State a Parliamentary Government is an absurdity, and, as a matter of fact, there is no Parliamentary Government, neither in Prussia nor in the Empire. There is no responsible Cabinet. The Chancellor is accountable, not to the majority of the Reichstag, but to the Kaiser. The Germans imagine that because they have the fiction of universal suffrage they possess the most democratic Government in Europe. And an enthusiastic German triumphantly reminded me of the fact at a mass meeting which I recently held in San Francisco on behalf of the Allies. I reminded him that Bismarck himself has given us in his "Memoirs" the Machiavellic reasons which induced him to invent the fiction of universal suffrage. The man of blood and iron tells us that he only adopted universal suffrage as a temporary device to convert the German States to the Prussian policy, and as a means of influencing the people against the federal dynasties.

The Reichstag is essentially different from a British House of Commons. As a political body it is the most contemptible assembly in Europe. It is a mere debating club, a convenient machine to vote the Government taxes. And even the power of voting has been largely taken from it. It has become part of the German constitutional practice that the military estimates must be passed without discussion. It is only considerable increases of the army and navy which have to be submitted to the Reichstag, and those increases are generally voted for a number of years. In 1887 a characteristic episode happened. Bismarck had decided on formidable additions to the army, and he wanted those additions voted and guaranteed for seven years. The military "Septennate Law" frightened even a docile Reichstag, and the Catholic party refused to vote it. Bismarck, who for ten years had fought the Pope, and who had thundered against the interference of a foreign ecclesiastical potentate in temporal matters, now asked the Pope to interfere in favour of the Army Bill. To the discredit of the Papacy, Leo XIII. fell into the trap. Leo XIII. exerted pressure on the Catholic party. But they still were recalcitrant. Bismarck and the Pope proved equally persistent. Finally, at the behest of the Iron Chancellor and with the assistance of the Vicar of Christ, the Reichstag passed that fatal military law, which was the beginning of the colossal European armaments, which were to increase the political tension of Europe until breaking-point, and which was to result in the present catastrophe. Thus is Parliamentary Government carried on in the Empire of the Hohenzollern!

Passive obedience and discipline are the cardinal virtues inculcated by the Hohenzollern. "Verboten," "Nicht raisonniren," are their watchwords. A Hohenzollern brooks no opposition. "Wir bleiben doch der Herr und Koenig und thun was wir wollen," said the Sergeant-King. And two hundred years after, the Kaiser expresses the same imperial sentiments: "Wer mir nicht gehorcht, den zerschmettere ich" (Whoever refuses to obey, I shall smash). Bismarck, who created the German Empire, was dismissed like a lackey. Baron von Stein, who reformed the Prussian State, and who stands out as the greatest statesman of his age, was ignominiously dismissed. Ingratitude has always formed part of the Hohenzollern code of royal ethics.

We are told by the apologists of the Hohenzollern that the same discipline, the same obedience to duty, are practised by the rulers themselves. "Ich Dien" is the Hohenzollern motto. Of all the servants of the Prussian State, there is none who serves it more loyally, more strenuously, than the King of Prussia. "I am the Commander-in-Chief and the Minister of Finance of the King of Prussia," said the Sergeant-King of himself. How often have the Prussian Kings been held up as shining examples of devotion to duty! Behold how hard a Hohenzollern King has to work for the State! In the same way the business man who rules his staff with a rod of iron might say to his discontented workmen: "See how strenuously I labour for the success of the business!" The workmen would probably answer that the ceaseless toil of the business man is not wholly disinterested, that the millionaire manufacturer is not a philanthropist; and the apologists of the Hohenzollern might be reminded that a King of Prussia in every generation has been wont to work mainly for himself.

XI.—THE HOHENZOLLERN AS THE CHAMPIONS OF PROTESTANTISM.

Treitschke urges as one of the chief claims of the Hohenzollerns that they have been in modern Europe the champions of the Protestant religion and at the same time the apostles of toleration. Is not the Kaiser the supreme head of his Church and the Anointed of the Lord? Does not he still preach edifying sermons to his soldiers and sailors? And does he not at the same time extend his Imperial protection over believers of every creed?

The truth is that the Hohenzollerns have never been the champions of Protestantism, but have astutely and consistently exploited it for their own purposes. They did espouse the Lutheran and Calvinistic faith, but their conversion enabled them to appropriate the vast dominions of the Church, a spoliation which might have presented some difficulties if they had remained Catholic. We saw that, during the Thirty Years' War, during the supreme crisis of Protestantism, William George, Elector of Brandenburg, remained neutral and allowed the Northern hero, Gustavus Adolphus, and Cardinal Richelieu to champion the cause of the Protestant religion.

Not only did the Hohenzollerns not defend the Protestant religion; they perverted it and debased it by subjecting it to the Prussian State. Such subjection is the negation of Protestantism, as it is the negation of Christianity. Christianity in a political sense has always meant the separation of the spiritual and the temporal powers. It is the essence of Anglo-Saxon Protestantism that it actually does protest. It is of the essence of Nonconformity that it refuses to conform. Prussian Protestantism has ceased to protest, and conforms to whatever is demanded by the State. The Lutheran parson is the obedient servant of the Hohenzollern. "Cujus regio illius religio": spiritual allegiance must follow temporal allegiance.

The ultimate outcome of the confusion of spiritual and temporal powers in Prussia has been that Prussia has become the Atheist State, and it is because the Prussian State is an Atheist State and absolutely indifferent to the interests of religion that it has come to practise in its own peculiar way the political virtue of toleration. As the Prussian wars of conquest had brought together many heterogeneous populations professing different religions, toleration became a vital necessity for the State. It is not a virtue of the dynasty, and the Hohenzollerns certainly deserve no credit for it. The Prussian doctrine of toleration has always been of a negative and conditional kind. Prussian Kings have adopted the religious theory of Gibbon. All religions are equally true to the believer. They are equally true to the unbeliever. They are equally useful to the State.

All religions have proved equally useful and have been exploited with equal indifference by the Prussian dynasty. The attitude of Frederick the Great to religion is characteristic of the Hohenzollern attitude. Frederick the Great was surrounded by a band of French, Swiss, and Scottish Atheists. His main relaxation from the cares of State was to bandy cynical and obscene jests on Christianity with the Table Round at the private supper-parties of Potsdam. But his royal hatred and contempt for all positive religion did not prevent him from cordially inviting the Jesuits to his dominions because he found them useful pedagogues to teach and conciliate his newly conquered Polish subjects. It is one of the paradoxes of history that the same religious order which had been suppressed by the Pope and expelled by the Catholic Kings of France and Spain was protected by the Atheist King of Prussia and the Atheist Empress of Russia. According to the same opportunist Hohenzollern tradition, Bismarck in turn fought the Pope, imprisoned Bishops and Cardinals, and then used the influence of the Pope and the hierarchy to further his Machiavellian policy. Even so in more recent times the Kaiser appeared at one and the same time as a devout pilgrim to the Holy Land, as the special friend of Abdul Hamid—Abdul the Damned—and as the self-appointed protector of three hundred million Mohammedans.

XII.—HOW THE GERMAN PEOPLE WERE SUBJECTED TO PRUSSIA.

We have analyzed the principles which ever directed the Prussian State. We have described the characteristics of the Hohenzollern dynasty who created that Prussian State. How is it that the German nation should have surrendered their destinies to a power which is so constitutionally selfish, so inherently evil, which has trampled down all the principles that a modern world holds dear and sacred?

The subjection of Germany to Prussia has been a triumph of Hohenzollern diplomacy and deceit, and has been the outcome of a tragic misunderstanding on the part of a politically uneducated and inexperienced people. The German people were tired of their political impotence, of their miserable dynastic quarrels, of their abject subservience to their parasitic princelings. The German people, broken up in a hundred petty States, had the legitimate and praiseworthy ambition of becoming a united people. German unity had been for generations a cherished dream of German patriots. History had abundantly proved that the Austrian Empire could not assist in the realization of that dream. Then came the opportunity of the Prussian tempter. Prussia offered her mighty sword. Prussia alone had the military power and a strong political organization. The German States yielded to the temptation. They trusted that, in concluding an alliance with Prussia, they would retain their liberties. Indeed, they hoped that once German unity was realized, Germany would assimilate and absorb the Prussian State. Alas! it was the Hohenzollern State which was to annex and subject the German Empire. Little did the Germans know Prussian tenacity. Little did they know the rapacity of the Black Eagle. Still less did they know the black magic of the necromancer Bismarck.

Treitschke reminds us in his "Politik" of an incident which is characteristic of the relation of the German Empire to Prussia. On one occasion even Bismarck, the Prussian Junker, expressed a misgiving that a particular law would not be acceptable to the Federal States of the Empire. Emperor William contemptibly dismissed the objection. "Why should the Federal States object when they are only the prolongation of Prussia?" Treitschke, the Saxon, accepts the Prussian theory of Emperor William. He tells us proudly that the Federal States have ceased to be independent States—indeed, that they have lost the essential characteristics of a State, that they are only called States by courtesy, that there is only one State in the German Empire, and that all the other Federal communities only continue their precarious existence by virtue and with the consent of the Hohenzollern dynasty.

It is one of the most appalling misunderstandings of history. Like Faust, the German people have sold their soul to Mephistopheles: Bismarck. And they have sold it for power. They are now paying the price. As in the wonderful old ballad of Burger, the Prussian horseman has taken the maiden "Germania" on his saddle. The death's-head hussar has carried her away on his wild career through space until he has brought her to the gates of Hell.

It has thus been the fate of the German nation, as of other European nations, to work and fight for the aggrandizement of the King of Prussia. A section of the people, the Social Democrats and the Liberals, have made fitful and impotent efforts to free themselves from the tyranny of the Hohenzollern. What they have not succeeded in doing, Europe is now doing for them. In the fulness of time, Europe has arisen to crush the Hohenzollern, to kill the "Spirit of the Prussian Hive." The war will result in the enfranchisement of Germany as it will result in the enfranchisement of Poland and Serbia. Did the history of the world ever present so tragic a paradox? Twelve million heroes are fighting the German Government. Millions of the manhood of the civilized world are laying down their lives on all the battlefields of Europe and all the high seas of the world, mainly in order to make the German people free.

XIII.—JUDGMENT ON THE HOHENZOLLERN STATE.

In 1807, after the crushing defeat inflicted by Napoleon on the Prussian armies at Jena, when the Military Monarchy crumbled to pieces in one day like a house of cards, Joseph de Maistre, the most profound and the most prophetic political thinker of his age, wrote the following significant lines from St. Petersburg. To realize the full significance of the judgment, one must remember that Count de Maistre was a fanatic supporter of the old monarchic order. He hated Napoleon with a bitter hatred, but he hated Prussia more:

"Ever since I have started to reason, I have felt a special aversion for Frederick II., whom a frenzied generation has been in a hurry to proclaim a great man, but who was really no more than a great Prussian. Posterity will consider this Prince as one of the greatest enemies of the human species that has ever lived. His monarchy, which had inherited his spirit, had become an argument against Providence. To-day that argument has been converted into a tangible proof of eternal justice. This famous structure built with blood and mud, with debased coin and base libels, has crumbled in the twinkle of an eye."[12]

[12] De Maistre, "Lettres et Opuscules."

Those words were written exactly one hundred and ten years ago, and the world is once more anxiously looking forward to another Jena which will deal a final blow to the Hohenzollern monarchy. When that catastrophe comes, Europe, enlightened by the awful experiences of the last hundred years, and delivered from the black magic of the political necromancers of Potsdam, will unanimously echo the prophetic judgment pronounced by Joseph de Maistre. For to-day, even more than in 1807, Prussia has become an "argument against Providence." Even more than in 1807 the Prussia of 1917 "is built with blood and mud." Even more than in 1807 the chastisement of Prussia is demanded by "eternal justice." The whole civilized world will breathe more freely when the sinister and diabolical power will be broken for ever and will oppress and degrade humanity no more.



CHAPTER IV

THE GERMAN WAR-TRIUMVIRATE

I.—NIETZSCHE.

The English reader is now in possession of a complete translation of Nietzsche, in the admirable edition published by T. N. Foulis, and edited by Oscar Levy, of which the eighteenth and concluding volume has just appeared. To the uninitiated I would recommend as an introductory study: (1) Professor Lichtenberger's volume; (2) Ludovici, "Nietzsche" (1s., Constable), with a suggestive preface by Dr. Levy; (3) the very useful summary of Mr. Muegge—an excellent number in an excellent series (Messrs. Jack's "People's Books"); (4) Dr. Barry's chapter in the "Heralds of Revolt," giving the Catholic point of view; (5) Mrs. Foerster-Nietzsche, "The Young Nietzsche"; and (6) an essay by the present writer, published as far back as 1897, and which, therefore, may at least claim the distinction of having been one of the first to draw attention in Great Britain to the great German writer. But a searching estimate of Nietzsche in English still remains to be written. And there is only one man that could write it, and that man is Mr. Gilbert K. Chesterton. I confidently prophesy that a study of Nietzsche, if he has the courage to undertake it, will be Mr. Chesterton's greatest book. He will find in the German heretic a foe worthy of his steel.

I.

Like the history of most great thinkers, like the history of Kant and Schopenhauer, the biography of Nietzsche is totally barren of incident, and can be disposed of in a few lines. Born in 1844, apparently of noble Polish extraction ("Nizky" in Polish means humble), the son of a clergyman, and the descendant on both sides of a long line of clergymen, the future "Anti-Christ" spent an exemplary, studious, and strenuous youth. After serving his time in the army—he was considered one of the best riders of his regiment—and after a brilliant University career at Bonn and Leipzig, he was appointed, at twenty-four years of age, Professor of Greek in the University of Bale. His academic activity extended over eleven years, and was only interrupted in 1870 by a few months' service in the Ambulance Corps, during the Franco-German War.

His first book, "The Birth of Tragedy," appeared in 1871. Like most of his books, it was published at his own expense, and, like most of his books, it did not find a public. The three first parts of his masterpiece, "Thus Spake Zarathustra," were such a desperate failure that Nietzsche only ventured to print fifty copies of the fourth and concluding part, and he printed them merely for private circulation amongst his friends, but he only disposed of seven copies!

In 1879 he resigned, owing to ill-health, with a pension of L120. After his retirement he spent a nomadic life wandering from Nice to Venice, and from the Engadine to Sicily, ever in quest of health and sunshine, racked by neuralgia and insomnia, still preaching in the desert, still plunging deeper and deeper into solitude. And as the world refused to listen to him, Nietzsche became more and more convinced of the value of his message. His last book, "Ecce Homo," an autobiography, contains all the premonitory symptoms of the threatening tragedy. It is mainly composed of such headings as the following: "Why I am so Wise," "Why I am so Clever," "Why I write such Excellent Books," and "Why I am a Fatalist."

Alas! fatality was soon to shatter the wise and clever man who wrote those excellent books. In 1889 Nietzsche went mad. For eleven years he lingered on in private institutions and in the house of his old mother at Naumburg. He died in 1900, when his name and fame had radiated over the civilized world, and when the young generation in Germany was hailing him as the herald of a new age. England, as usually happens in the case of Continental thinkers, was the last European country to feel his influence; but in recent years that influence has been rapidly gaining ground, even in England, a fact abundantly proved by the great and startling success of the complete edition of his works.

II.

Most writers on Nietzsche—and they are legion—begin with extolling him as a prophet or abusing him as a lunatic. I submit that before we extol or abuse, our first duty is to understand. And we can no longer evade that duty. We cannot afford any longer to ignore or dismiss the most powerful force in Continental literature, on the vain pretence that the author was mad, as if the greatest French thinker of the eighteenth century, Rousseau, and the greatest thinker of the nineteenth century, Auguste Comte, had not fallen victims to the same disease.

And, on the whole, Nietzsche is not difficult to understand, although there has arisen a host of commentators to obscure his meaning, although Nietzsche himself delights in expressing himself in the form of cryptic and mystic aphorism, although he continuously contradicts himself. But apart from those difficulties, his message is strikingly simple and his personality is singularly transparent. And his message and his personality are one. He is a convincing illustration of Fichte's dictum, that any great system of philosophy is the outcome, not of the intellect, but of a man's character. Nietzsche is not a metaphysician like Hegel, whom he abhorred. He is not a "logic-grinder," like Mill, whom he despised. He is a moralist, like the French, whom he loved. His culture and learning were French even more than German. He was steeped in Montaigne, to whom he has paid a glowing tribute in "Schopenhauer as Educationalist." He was a careful student of the great French classics of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He read and annotated Guyau, with whom he had many points in common. By a curious coincidence, a few years before the advent of Nietzsche, a great French thinker had anticipated every one of Nietzsche's doctrines, and had expressed them in one of the most striking books of the French language. And by an even more curious paradox, whilst every European critic devotes himself to-day to the interpretation of Nietzsche's philosophy, they systematically ignore—as Nietzsche himself ignored—the masterpiece of the Frenchman.

III.

Let us, then, first keep in mind that Nietzsche is not a metaphysician or a logician, but he is pre-eminently a moralist. His one aim is to revise our moral values and to establish new values in their place. For Nietzsche does both. There are two poles to his thought. He is an iconoclast, but he is also a hero-worshipper. He is a herald of revolt, but he is also a constructive thinker. Even in his earliest work, "Thoughts out of Season," whilst he destroys the two popular idols of the day, the theologian and the historian, he sets up two new heroes, Schopenhauer and Wagner.

IV.

We have said that Nietzsche's philosophy is strikingly simple. Its whole kernel can be expressed in two words. He is a systematic pagan, and he is an uncompromising aristocrat. As a pagan, he is a consistent enemy of Christianity. As an aristocrat, he is a bitter opponent of democracy. He proclaims that Anti-Christ has appeared in his own person. He hails the advent of the Superman.

First, he is a pagan, a pagan of Greece, or, rather, a pagan of the Renascence, and, as a pagan, he considers Christianity the real enemy. Christianity denies life; Nietzsche asserts it. Christianity mainly thinks of the future world; Nietzsche has his feet firmly planted on Mother Earth. Christianity glorifies meekness and humility; Nietzsche glorifies pride and self-assertion. Christianity defends the poor and the weak; Nietzsche contends that the strong alone have a right to live. Christianity blesses the peacemakers; Nietzsche extols the warriors. Christianity is the religion of human suffering; Nietzsche is a worshipper of life, and proclaims the joyful science, die froehliche Wissenschaft, the gaya scienza.

It is impossible within the limits of a short article to discuss Nietzsche's view of Christianity. We are concerned here not with discussion, but with exposition. At an early opportunity we hope to deal at some length in the columns of Everyman with Nietzsche's criticism of Christianity. For the present, let it be sufficient to say that no theologian would be prepared to accept his interpretation of the Christian religion. The everlasting conflict of spirit against sense and brutal force, which is the essence of Christianity, is hardly conducive to passivity. It is, on the contrary, a consistent discipline in modern heroism. There is not much meekness about the Jesuits or the warrior Popes. Nor is there much melancholy about St. Francis of Assisi or St. Theresa. The only smiling countenance in a hospital is the Sister of Mercy. The only active resisters under the despotism of Henry VIII. were Sir Thomas More and a broken octogenarian priest, Cardinal Fisher.

V.

The same fundamental instinct or principle, the same defiant optimism, the same exultation in the pride of life, which makes Nietzsche into an opponent of Christianity, also makes him into an opponent of democracy. The same belief in force, in the will to power, which makes Nietzsche into a pagan, also makes him into an aristocrat. For the political expression of Christianity must needs be democracy. We are democrats because we are Christians, because we believe in the essential dignity of man. On the contrary, the political outcome of paganism must needs be despotism and aristocracy. We believe in despotism and aristocracy because we believe in the natural inequality of man, because we believe in force and pride and self-assertion, in the power of the strong to oppress the weak. Nietzsche is against the oppressed and for the oppressor; for the Superman against humanity. For in Nietzsche's view an aristocracy is the ultimate purpose of life.

But Nietzsche is not an aristocrat, like the ordinary Darwinian. He does not believe in the survival of the fittest, like the typical evolutionist. He does not believe that a survival of the fittest will come about mechanically by the mere play of blind forces. Regression is as natural as progression. No one has pointed this out more convincingly than Huxley in his "Evolution and Ethics." The progress of the race is not natural, but artificial and accidental and precarious. Therefore Nietzsche believes in artificial selection. The Superman is not born, he must be bred. Nietzsche is the spiritual father and forerunner of the Eugenists.

And he is also the spiritual father of the Imperialists and latter-day Militarists. The gospel of the inequality of the individual implies the gospel of the inequality of race. The gospel of Nietzsche has not only been anticipated by Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, but by his much more influential German namesake, Mr. Houston Stewart Chamberlain, the author whose books the Kaiser liberally distributed amongst his Generals and advisers. The doctrine of force, the belief in the German people as the salt of the earth, the self-gratification of the modern Teuton, can be traced directly to the influence of Zarathustra, and it is significant that the latest German exponent of Imperialism, General von Bernhardi, should have selected an aphorism of Nietzsche as the quintessence of his political philosophy:

"War and courage have achieved more great things than the love of our neighbour. It is not your sympathy, but your bravery, which has hitherto saved the shipwrecked of existence.

"'What is good?' you ask. 'To be braced is good.'"[13]

[13] Nietzsche's "Thus Spake Zarathustra," First Part, 10th Speech.

VI.

Quite apart from any elements of truth contained in Nietzsche's ethics, the first reason for his popularity is, no doubt, the perfection of his form and style. Nietzsche is one of the supreme masters of language, in a literature which counts very few masters of language, and the beauty of his style is transparent even in the disguise of a foreign translation.

The second reason is that Nietzsche, who imagined that he was fighting against the times, was in reality thinking with the times, and he has met with a ready response, in the dominant instincts of the present age, in the aggressive materialism, in the race for wealth and power. The Supermen and the Super-races of to-day only too cordially accept a philosophy which seems to justify extortion, aggression, and oppression in the name of a supreme moral principle.

The third and most important reason, and the real secret of Nietzsche's influence, is the fine quality of his moral personality. However much we may be repelled by the thinker, we are attracted by the magnetism of the man, by his noble courage, by his splendid integrity, by his love of truth, his hatred of cant. Even though he has himself misunderstood Christianity, he has done a great deal to bring us back to the fundamental ideals of the Christian religion. He has done a great deal to undermine that superficial and "rose-water" view of Christianity current in official and academic Protestant circles. He has done a great deal to convince us that whatever may be the essence of Christianity, it has nothing in common with that silly and pedantic game which, for half a century, has made Eternal Religion depend on the conclusions of "Higher Criticism," and which has made theology and philosophy the handmaidens of archaeology and philology.

Nietzsche is a formidable foe of Christianity, but he is a magnanimous foe, who certainly brings us nearer to a comprehension of the inmost meaning of the very doctrines he attacks. And it is quite possible that the Christian champion of the future may incorporate Nietzsche in his apologetics, even as St. Thomas Aquinas incorporated Aristotle, even as Pascal incorporated Montaigne. It was in the fitness of things that Nietzsche should be the descendant of a long line of Protestant ministers. For, indeed, he is the last of the true German Protestants, ever ready to protest and to defy and to challenge. He is the noblest of modern German heretics.

II.—MONTAIGNE AND NIETZSCHE.

I.

There is a continuity and heredity in the transmission of ideas as there is in the transmission of life. Each great thinker has a spiritual posterity, which for centuries perpetuates his doctrine and his moral personality. And there is no keener intellectual enjoyment than to trace back to their original progenitors one of those mighty and original systems which are the milestones in the history of human thought.

It is with such a spiritual transmission that I am concerned in the present paper. I would like to establish the intimate connection which exists between Montaigne and Nietzsche, between the greatest of French moralists and the greatest of Germans. A vast literature has grown up in recent years round the personality and works of Nietzsche, which would already fill a moderately sized library. It is therefore strange that no critic should have emphasized and explained the close filiation between him and Montaigne. It is all the more strange because Nietzsche himself has acknowledged his debt to the "Essays" with a frankness which leaves no room to doubt.

To anyone who knows how careful Nietzsche was to safeguard his originality, such an acknowledgment is in itself sufficient proof of the immense power which Montaigne wielded over Nietzsche at a decisive and critical period of his intellectual development. But only a systematic comparison could show that we have to do here with something more than a mental stimulus and a quickening of ideas, that Montaigne's "Essays" have provided the foundations of Nietzsche's philosophy, and that the Frenchman may rightly be called, and in a very definite sense, the "spiritual father" of the German.

II.

At first sight this statement must appear paradoxical, and a first reading of the two writers reveals their differences rather than their resemblances. The one strikes us as essentially the sane; the other, even in his first books, reveals that lack of mental balance which was to terminate in insanity. The one is a genial sceptic; the other is a fanatic dogmatist. To Montaigne life is a comedy; to his disciple life is a tragedy. The one philosophizes with a smile; the other, to use his own expression, philosophizes with a hammer. The one is a Conservative; the other is a herald of revolt. The one is constitutionally moderate and temperate; the other is nearly always extreme and violent in his judgment. The one is a practical man of the world; the other is a poet and a dreamer and a mystic. The one is quaintly pedantic, and his page is often a mosaic of quotations; the other is supremely original. The one is profuse in his professions of loyalty to the Roman Catholic Church; the other calls himself Anti-Christ.

III.

There can be no doubt that if the characteristics which we have just referred to belonged essentially to Montaigne, there would be little affinity between the thought of Nietzsche and that of Montaigne. And it would be impossible to account for the magnetic attraction which drew Nietzsche to the study of the "Essays," and for the enthusiasm with which they inspired him. But I am convinced that those characteristics are not the essential characteristics. I am convinced that there is another Montaigne who has nothing in common with the Montaigne of convention and tradition. I am convinced that the scepticism, the Conservatism, the irony, the moderation, the affectation of humility, frivolity, pedantry, and innocent candour, are only a mask and disguise which Montaigne has put on to conceal his identity, that they are only so many tricks and dodges to lead the temporal and spiritual powers off the track, and to reassure them as to his orthodoxy. I am convinced that beneath and beyond the Montaigne of convention and tradition there is another much bigger and much deeper Montaigne, whose identity would have staggered his contemporaries, and would have landed him in prison. And it is this unconventional and real Montaigne who is the spiritual father of Nietzsche.

It is obviously impossible, within the limits of a brief paper, to prove this far-reaching statement and to establish the existence of an esoteric and profound meaning in the "Essays." I shall only refer to a passage which is ignored by most commentators, which has been added in the posthumous edition, in which Montaigne himself admits such a double and esoteric meaning, and which seems to me to give the key to the interpretation of the "Essays":

"I know very well that when I hear anyone dwell upon the language of my essays, I had rather a great deal he would say nothing: 'tis not so much to elevate the style as to depress the sense, and so much the more offensively as they do it obliquely; and yet I am much deceived if many other writers deliver more worth noting as to the matter, and, how well or ill soever, if any other writer has sown things much more material, or at all events more downright, upon his paper than myself. To bring the more in, I only muster up the heads; should I annex the sequel I should trebly multiply the volume. And how many stories have I scattered up and down in this book, that I only touch upon, which, should anyone more curiously search into, they would find matter enough to produce infinite essays. Neither those stories nor my quotations always serve simply for example, authority, or ornament; I do not only regard them for the use I make of them; they carry sometimes, besides what I apply them to, the seed of a more rich and a bolder matter, and sometimes, collaterally, a more delicate sound, both to myself, who will say no more about it in this place, and to others who shall be of my humour."

IV.

The real and esoteric Montaigne is, like Nietzsche, a herald of revolt, one of the most revolutionary thinkers of all times. And the Gascon philosopher who philosophizes with a smile is far more dangerous than the Teuton who philosophizes with a hammer. The corrosive acid of his irony is more destructive than the violence of the other. Like Nietzsche, Montaigne transvalues all our moral values. Nothing is absolute; everything is relative. There is no law in morals.

"The laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature, proceed from custom; everyone having an inward veneration for the opinions and manners approved and received amongst his own people, cannot, without very great reluctance, depart from them, nor apply himself to them without applause."

There is no absolute law in politics. And one form of government is as good as another.

"Such people as have been bred up to liberty, and subject to no other dominion but the authority of their own will, look upon all other forms of government as monstrous and contrary to nature. Those who are inured to monarchy do the same; and what opportunity soever fortune presents them with to change, even then, when with the greatest difficulties they have disengaged themselves from one master, that was troublesome and grievous to them, they presently run, with the same difficulties, to create another; being unable to take into hatred subjection itself."

There is no law in religion. There is no justification in patriotism. The choice of religion is not a matter of conscience or of reason, but of custom and climate. We are Christians by the same title as we are Perigordins or Germans.

V.

If to destroy all human principles and illusions is to be a sceptic, Montaigne is the greatest sceptic that ever existed. But Montaigne's scepticism is only a means to an end. On the ruin of all philosophies and religions Montaigne, like Nietzsche, has built up a dogmatism of his own. The foundation of that dogmatism in both is an unbounded faith in life and in nature. Like Nietzsche, Montaigne is an optimist. At the very outset of the "Essays" he proclaims the joy of life. He preaches the gaya scienza, the froehliche Wissenschaft. All our sufferings are due to our departing from the teachings of Nature. The chapter on cannibalism, from which Shakespeare has borrowed a famous passage in "The Tempest," and which has probably suggested the character of Caliban, must be taken in literal sense. The savage who lives in primitive simplicity comes nearer to Montaigne's ideal of perfection than the philosopher and the saint.

VI.

And this brings us to the fundamental analogy between Nietzsche and Montaigne. Like the German, the Frenchman is a pure pagan. Here, again, we must not be misled by the innumerable professions of faith, generally added in later editions and not included in the edition of 1580. Montaigne is uncompromisingly hostile to Christianity. His Catholicism must be understood as the Catholicism of Auguste Comte, defined by Huxley—namely, Catholicism minus Christianity. He glorifies suicide. He abhors the self-suppression of asceticism; he derides chastity, humility, mortification—every virtue which we are accustomed to associate with the Christian faith. He glorifies self-assertion and the pride of life. Not once does he express even the most remote sympathy for the heroes of the Christian Church, for the saints and martyrs. On the other hand, again and again he indulges in lyrical raptures for the achievements of the great men of Greece and Rome. He is an intellectual aristocrat. His ideal policy is the policy of the Spartans—"almost miraculous in its perfection." His ideal man is the pagan hero—the superman of antiquity—Alcibiades, Epaminondas, Alexander, Julius Caesar.

III.—TREITSCHKE[14] AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF PRUSSIANISM.

[14] Treitschke, "History of Germany," Vols. I. and II. (Jarrold.) Treitschke, "Politics," with Introduction by A. J. Balfour: 2 vols, (Constable, London.)

There is a most baneful delusion which has misled the Allies from the beginning of the war, and which is still being acted on after three years of a desperate struggle—namely, that we are mainly fighting a sinister political dynasty and a formidable political machine constructed with all the diabolical ingenuity and armed with all the resources of the destructive genius of man. If, indeed, we had only been confronted by the Kaiser and his paladins, or only threatened by his military machine, the war would long ago have been ended—if not by the Allies, then by the German people themselves. Millions of people, however loyal, do not allow themselves to be slaughtered for a dynast, even though that dynast claims to be a Superman, even though he be called Prince of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen or Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, even though he be called Prince Henry XXI. of Reuss of the younger branch or Prince Henry LXXXVIII. of Reuss of the older branch. Whole nations do not indefinitely submit to being the slaves of a machine, however diabolical and however perfect. The truth is that behind the German princes and princelings and Junkers there is the resolve of a united people. Behind the Prussian machine there is the driving power of tremendous spiritual and moral forces, of an inflexible purpose, of a compelling idealism, of a mystical creed accepted with more than Mohammedan fanaticism. It is that national purpose, it is those spiritual forces, which explain the unconquerable pride of the German people, as evil and as lofty as the pride of Satan in "Paradise Lost." It is these which explain their devotion and self-sacrifice, it is these which explain the Teutonic legions marching to their doom singing their hymns of love as well as their hymns of hatred. It is these which explain the two million volunteers which in August, 1914, went to swell the huge German conscript armies. It is the obsession of that mystical German creed which explains the epic achievements of the German offensive and the even more astounding achievements of the German defensive. We may continue to denounce the crimes of Germany and the atrocities of the German soldiery—and I have personally denounced them until my readers must have got sick of my denunciations. But there is nothing particularly mysterious in crimes and atrocities, and crimes and atrocities alone do not help to explain the German soul. Crimes and atrocities do not make us understand how even to-day the German hosts are still able to challenge a whole world in arms.

Let us, then, take in the vital fact that after three years those German spiritual forces, those perverted German ideals, remain the most formidable obstacle in our path. We may continue to destroy the German armies by the slow process of attrition, and we may continue to sacrifice the flower of our youth until the process is completed. We may trust to our superiority in money-power and in man-power, but unless we also break the moral power of German ideals, unless we exorcise the spell which possesses the German mind, unless we triumph in the spiritual contest as well as in the battle of tanks and howitzers, unless we overthrow the idols which successive generations of great teachers and preachers have imposed on a susceptible, receptive, and docile people, there will be no early settlement, nor, however long belated, can there ever be a lasting peace.

The foregoing remarks may justify the following attempt to interpret and to make intelligible, even to the most inattentive reader, the creed of one of the most powerful of those teachers and preachers who have taken such mysterious and uncanny possession of the soul of the German nation. Before 1914 none except a few initiated had ever heard of Treitschke. Since 1914 he has become a household name and a name of evil import. But to the immense majority of readers that name, however familiar and ominous, remains an empty name. Nomen flatus vocis. And even those to whom the name conveys something more definite do not trouble about its meaning. With that strange disbelief in the power of ideas which is one of our lamentable weaknesses, and which even the war has not been able to cure, even yet we have not brought ourselves to take seriously those terrible theories which have burnt themselves into the Teutonic imagination. And so indifferent have we remained to doctrines so far-reaching and so deadly that the recent publication of an excellent English translation of Treitschke's "German History," one of the masterpieces of historical literature, has had to be suspended for the incredible reason that there was no British public to read it.

On approaching the study of Treitschke's works, we are at once impressed by the inexorable logic of his political and moral creed. There is, perhaps, no other instance of a system so splendidly consistent in its principles. We are told that the great French naturalist, Cuvier, was able to reconstruct the whole anatomy of an animal merely through examining the structure of a tooth or the fragment of a bone. Applying to the German historian the method which Cuvier applied to the antediluvian mastodon, we can reduce the whole complex political philosophy of Treitschke from a few fundamental principles which he follows with a single mind, and which the Prussian State has applied with an equally relentless consistency both in its internal and in its foreign policy.

It is this magnificent consistency, this confident dogmatism, which gives us the secret of the enormous influence of Treitschke on his countrymen, as it explains the hypnotism of Jean-Jacques Rousseau on a previous generation. I do not think it would be easy to overestimate the extent of that influence. It is true that in one sense Treitschke's political philosophy only expresses the Prussian policy, and that he did not create it. But when a political ideal is expounded with such clarity and such force, when it is propagated with such enthusiasm, when it takes such exclusive hold of the mind, it becomes a hundred times more efficient and more dangerous; it acquires the compelling force and inspires the fanaticism of religion. Those readers who will follow Treitschke's close reasoning to the end will probably agree with me that the political creed of which he has been the apostle and prophet is substantially the same creed which has plunged Europe into the present world war, and that, more than any one thinker, much more certainly than Nietzsche, Treitschke must be held responsible for the catastrophe.

I have confined myself to expounding the doctrines of Treitschke. I have not attempted to refute them. It is not my object to denounce: there is always a sufficient number of publicists ever ready to undertake the task of denunciation. I am only trying to understand. Nor have I dwelt on any side-issues. I have restricted myself to those simple and fundamental axioms which have directed the policy of Prussia. Almost invariably in human history it is only the simple, sweeping dogmas which obtain universal acceptance.

I.—TREITSCHKE AS THE REPRESENTATIVE PRUSSIAN.

There exist in the realm of fiction certain literary types which are an equal joy to the creative artist and to the student of human nature. There are certain malignant diseases which are an inspiration to the pathologist. And there are criminal cases which are a revelation to the lawyer: test cases which lead up to new discoveries and illustrate fundamental principles. What those classical types of Balzac or Dostoievski are to the critic, what those diseases and criminal cases are to the surgeon and the lawyer, the writings of Treitschke are to the student of history and politics; they throw a new and vivid light on the dark and hidden depths of the Prussian mind. They reveal like no other German writings the meaning of German policy, the spirit which inspires it. They explain what without them would have remained unexplained. He is much more than the historian of the Prussian State, he is the champion of its ideals. Much better than Bismarck, or the Kaiser, or than the "Clown Prince," he makes clear to us the aims and the aspirations of the Hohenzollern monarchy and of the German nation.

In the history of literature and thought it is given to but very few writers thus to become the spokesmen of a whole people. To achieve such importance a writer must possess many qualifications. He must possess a strong and dominating character. He must be a great literary artist. He must be a clear, a bold, and an independent thinker. The following pages will show in how eminent a degree Treitschke possessed all those qualities and how unreservedly they were placed at the service of the Prussian cause.

II.—TREITSCHKE'S PERSONALITY.

The first quality which challenges attention is the commanding strength of his personality. He combines the most contradictory gifts: the temperament of the artist, the imagination of the poet, the inspiring faith of the idealist, the practical sense of the realist, and the enthusiasm of the apostle. He always impresses you with that magnetic sense of power into which Carlyle impresses his readers. Like Carlyle, he is a firm believer in the heroic, and he has himself the temper of a hero. Three of his volumes of essays bear the significant title, "Deutsche Kaempfe" ("German Battles"). All through his career Treitschke has been fighting his patriotic battles. Obsessed by his ideals, he always has the courage of his convictions, and is always ready to suffer for them. In his early youth he had a painful quarrel with his father, a Saxon General and a loyal servant of the Saxon dynasty, because the son would not refrain from his attacks on Saxon "particularism" and would not abstain from championing the Prussian cause. Treitschke never evades a difficulty. He is never swayed by outside influences. He never dreads contradiction. When facts do not tally with his favourite theories, he brushes them away. And he never accepts any compromise. He is all made of one piece. He has the hardness of granite. He has never been afraid of unpopularity. He has always been a loyal friend and an equally staunch hater.

III.—TREITSCHKE AS A WRITER.

"Le style est l'homme." Never was Buffon's dictum more strikingly verified, and never did any literary style reveal so completely the personality of the man. Treitschke's style is imperious and aggressive. It has the ring of the General who gives the word of command. His sentences are not involved, as German sentences generally are. They are pregnant and concise. Treitschke often reminds one of a writer whom of all others he most cordially detests. Like Heine, Treitschke is incisive, epigrammatic. His phrase has always muscle and nerve: it has warmth and fervour. Treitschke has not the gift of humour. A German seldom possesses that redeeming gift. But he wields the weapon of trenchant irony with terrible force, and he adds the poet's power of vision and the true historian's sense of reality and sense of individuality. He has Macaulay's gift of orderly narrative. He is equally masterly in describing a battle scene, a meeting of diplomatists, a revolutionary movement. His picture of the Congress of Vienna is unsurpassed in historical literature. Like Saint-Simon, he can sum up a character in a few lines. German historians are seldom skilful portrait-painters. Treitschke forms an exception. His portraits of Talleyrand, of Metternich, of Tsar Alexander I., of Leopold I., King of the Belgians, are masterpieces of the literary craft.

IV.—TREITSCHKE AS A CLEAR AND ORIGINAL THINKER.

But all those artistic gifts would not have given him his commanding influence in the world of practical politics if he had not added the gifts of clear thinking and luminous exposition, which are so very rare in Germany. Treitschke is essentially an honest and systematic thinker. As Professor of History in the University of Berlin, he was accustomed to make intricate and abstract subjects interesting and intelligible to vast audiences of students. We are never left in any doubt as to his inner meaning. He always goes straight to the point. There are no equivocations or mental reservations. He has the brevity but none of the ambiguity of the lawgiver. There are no gaps in his reasoning. He moves from one point to another in orderly sequence. Our intellectual and artistic joy in following the severe and simple outline of his political system is only marred by the thought of the appalling practical consequences of those doctrines.

And not only is he a clear thinker. He is also an original and independent thinker. He has not the professional taint of the German pedant. He has the German professor's minute knowledge of concrete facts, and his doctrinaire love of abstract principles, but he is not a mere scholar and teacher. He always remains the man of the world, and he brings to the consideration of historical problems the practical experience which he gained as a journalist and as a member of the Reichstag. He does not apply any conventional standards to his judgments of men and events. He looks at everything from his own angle. There is a delightful freshness about everything he writes. He believes that the first duty of an historian is to be partial. He always follows a bias, but it is his own bias. In his German history he has not been content with digging up thousands of new facts from the recesses of German records; he gives his own interpretation to the facts. He has no respect for established fame, for existing theories. He delights in shocking his readers. In his "Goetzendaemmerung," or "Twilight of the Gods," Nietzsche has shown us how to "philosophize with a hammer." Treitschke has written history with a hammer, and all his writings are strewn with the fragments of broken idols and shattered reputations.

V.—THE PRUSSIAN STATE THE CENTRE OF TREITSCHKE'S LITERARY ACTIVITIES.

All Treitschke's activities have centred round one subject: the history and policy of the Prussian State. All his loyalties are given to one cause, the supremacy of the German Empire led by the Prussian State. He has been a voluminous writer, and he has written on the most varied subjects. But all those subjects have only been taken up with the one object of elucidating Prussian problems and directing Prussian policy. His studies on Federalism, on the United Netherlands—by far the most suggestive survey of Dutch history which has so far been attempted—are intended to solve the problem of the relation of Prussia to the Federal States of the German Empire. His study on Cavour and Italian unity was undertaken as an introduction to the study of German unity. His admirable monograph on that strange and unique military theocracy of the Teutonic order was an essay on the early history of Prussia. His volume on Bonapartism was a study of the chief political opponent of Prussian supremacy. Briefly, all his volumes of essays have been preparatory to his life-work, the history of Germany, and the history of Germany itself is always kept subordinate to the history of the Prussian State.

VI.—TREITSCHKE'S TREATISE ON POLITICS.

It is much to be regretted that the British public should have been first introduced to Treitschke's "History of Germany." The "History of Germany" is, no doubt, the most important and the most monumental, but it is by no means the most interesting nor the most significant of Treitschke's writings. German history could never be as arresting to a Continental student as British or French history. It is not mixed up with universal events. It is too parochial. It does not evoke human sympathy. With all the magic of Treitschke's art, we feel that we are following, not the great highway, but one of the by-ways of history. We cannot get absorbed in the petty quarrels of the princelings of the German Federation. Of the five volumes of Treitschke's "German History," the only part which is of general interest is the first volume, dealing with the rise of Prussia, the reign of Frederick the Great and his successors, the Napoleonic wars, and the Congress of Vienna.

As often happens, it is mainly through his minor writings that Treitschke will live—through his "Cavour," his "United Netherlands," his "Bonapartism," and his Biographical Essays. But to the philosophical student by far the most important of Treitschke's writings are his two volumes on the Science of Politics, which are, without exception, the most fascinating and the most suggestive political treatise published in this generation. Political treatises are proverbially dull and out of touch with reality. Treitschke's treatise is a solitary exception. To him politics are not, like mathematics, an abstract or a deductive science. We cannot build an ideal political structure in the air. The political thinker must be more modest in his ambitions. He cannot adduce first principles. All politics must be Realpolitik. All politics must be based on concrete historical facts—i.e., circumscribed in time and space. Indeed, strictly considered, political philosophy is only applied history. That is why political treatises are so disappointing. The philosopher is content to generalize, and does not know the facts. On the other hand, the historian who knows the facts has not the capacity of generalization. Politics must be mainly empirical. The political thinker does not reason forward from the past to the present, but backwards from the present to the past. He studies the present results of the mature experience of many ages, and then explains the distant past in the light of the present.

VII.—PRUSSIA THE SOLE STANDARD OF POLITICAL VALUES.

Not only has Prussian history been the centre of all Treitschke's activities; it also supplies him with the sole standard of all political values, the sole test of the truth of all political theories. With superb logic he deduces all his political system from the vicissitudes of the Brandenburg State. His sympathies and antipathies, his affinities and repulsions, are Prussian. Prussia and the German Empire have monopolized all human virtues. His only enemies are the enemies of the Prussian State (see paragraphs VIII. and IX. of this Essay).

Prussia is a national State, exclusive, self-sufficient, self-contained. Therefore, the national State is the supreme and final political reality (see paragraph XI.).

All the theories which challenge or threaten this conception of the national State are dismissed by Treitschke as damnable heresies: the heresy of individualism (see paragraph XII.), the heresy of internationalism (see paragraph XIII.), and the heresy of imperialism (paragraph XIV.).

The one aim of the Prussian State has been the extension of Prussian power. Therefore the will to power must be the fundamental dogma of the State (paragraph XV.).

Prussia has always subordinated political ethics to national aggrandizement; therefore Treitschke holds with Machiavelli that in politics the end justifies the means (paragraph XVI.).

Prussia has only expanded through war. War has been the national industry of the Prussian people. Therefore war is considered by Treitschke as the vital principle of national life (paragraph XVII.).

Prussia has been the family estate of the Hohenzollern dynasty; therefore the monarchy must be considered as the ideal form of government (paragraph XVIII.).

The Prussian military aristocracy of Junkers have been the mainstay of the Prussian State; therefore an aristocratic government is a corollary of the monarchic form of government, and the French democratic theory of government is the arch-heresy (paragraphs XIX. and XX.).

Prussia has been the leading Protestant State; therefore Roman Catholicism must be held to be inconsistent with the prosperity of any modern polity (paragraph XXI.).

Prussia, from a small straggling territory, has grown to be one of the leading Powers of Europe by the gradual absorption of all the surrounding small States; therefore only great Powers have a right to exist (paragraph XXII.); therefore small States are a monstrosity (paragraph XXIII.).

VIII.—TREITSCHKE'S POLITICAL PAGANISM.

There is no counterpart in modern history to the development of the Prussian State, no political structure so entirely self-contained and self-sufficient, which has so continuously pursued its own selfish ends. For an exact analogy it is necessary to revert to ancient history; therefore Treitschke's sympathies go to the ancient State much more than to the modern State. In his religion he is a devout Lutheran. But in his political conceptions he is entirely pagan. To him the politics of Aristotle remain the fountain of all political wisdom. The modern man in order to understand the majesty of the State must free himself of a whole mass of acquired notions. In quiet and peaceful times the average man may pursue his private avocations and hardly give a thought to the State. It was different in antiquity. The ancient city State was everything, and was felt to be everything, so that the citizen could not conceive himself as apart from the State. That is why they had a much stronger and healthier political sense, an instinctive comprehension for, and a passionate devotion to, the State. The moderns have ceased to live and move in the State. They are divided and distracted by their social and economic interests. Only the modern Prussian feels for Prussia as the Roman and the Spartan felt for their native countries. To the Prussian alone, as to the Roman and the Spartan, the devotion to the State is glorified into a religion, the religion of patriotism.

IX.—TREITSCHKE'S ANTIPATHIES AND HATREDS.

Even as his sympathies, so are Treitschke's antipathies determined by his Prussian preconceptions. Whatever is alien to Prussian ideals is odious to Treitschke. Whoever has opposed the growth of the Prussian State or threatened its future becomes a personal enemy. And, as every State has had to oppose the predatory policy of Prussia, and is threatened by its ambitions, as, to use Treitschke's own words, "Prussia was the best hated of all the German States from the first days of her independent history," the antipathies of the Prussian historian are almost universal. And what a fierce hater he is; what unlimited power of vituperation; what intensity of bitter feeling! He hates Talleyrand, Lord Palmerston, King Leopold of Belgium, with a personal animosity. He hates Britain and France. He hates Austria and the small German Principalities. He hates Belgium and Holland; and, above all, he loathes and despises the Jews.

X.—TREITSCHKE'S HATRED OF THE JEWS.

No nation inspires Treitschke with a more instinctive repulsion than the Jews. He may be called the father of scientific and pedantic anti-Semitism. In other nations anti-Semitism was only an instinctive and irrational popular feeling. In Treitschke anti-Semitism becomes a systematic doctrine. It becomes part of a political creed. Treitschke hates the Jews because they are unwarlike, because they are absorbed in material interests, because they are Atheists. He abhors the Gospel according to Saint Marx. He denounces the cynicism of Heine. He dreads the influence of the Jewish Press. But, above all, he hates the Jews because they are denationalized, because they have no stake in the prosperity and greatness of the national State. The Jews are wanderers without a settled existence, without allegiance and loyalty except to their own race. The dual political life which the Jews are leading as members of the Jewish nation and as parasites of other national States to which they have temporarily migrated is a permanent menace to a healthy national German life. Everywhere the Jews are revolutionists, anarchists, Atheists. All the leaders of the German Social Democracy—Lassalle, Marx, Engels, Kautsky, Bernstein—are Hebrews. It is the imperative duty of all Prussian patriots to guard the people against the Jewish danger, against Jewish journalism, Jewish finance, Jewish materialism, Jewish socialism, and Jewish internationalism.

XI.—THE THEORY OF THE NATIONAL STATE.

Let us revert to the starting-point of Treitschke's politics, which is the theory of the national State. Only in the national State can the individual realize the higher moral and political life. The State is not part of a larger whole. It is in itself a self-contained whole. It is not a means to an end; it is an end in itself. It is not a relative conception; it is an absolute. The French people may fight for humanity. A St. Louis may be inspired with the crusading spirit. Treitschke has no sympathy for such quixotism. The national State must be selfish. To be unselfish is the mortal sin of politics. Humanity, sentimentalism, have no place in politics. Frederick William IV., the one sentimental King in the whole history of the Hohenzollern Dynasty, once rendered an unselfish service to his neighbours. A Prussian army saved the Saxon monarchy from revolution and then withdrew. Treitschke has no words strong enough to condemn this solitary instance of a disinterested Prussian policy.

The national State is alone invested with the attributes of sovereignty. There is nothing above it. National rights must be final. The national State may for the time being limit its absolute sovereignty by international agreements, but any such agreements are only conditional and temporary—rebus sic stantibus. No national State can make international agreements which are binding for the future. The time must always come when the scrap of paper has to be torn asunder. It is true that the national State is indirectly playing its part in the moral education of humanity, but it will best serve humanity by only thinking of itself.

XII.—THE HERESY OF INDIVIDUALISM.

There are many heresies which threaten the orthodox religion of the national State. The first and the most dangerous is the heresy of individualism. A school of modern theorists, William von Humboldt and John Stuart Mill, have asserted the rights of the individual apart from and above the rights of the State. They reserve for the individual a sphere where the State may not encroach. According to Mill, the political life is only a part and the minor part of his social activities. His higher activities are spent in the service of the Church, in the service of Art and Science.

Treitschke has fought this heresy of individualism in all his writings. The interest of the individual cannot be opposed to the interest of the State. The individual can only realize himself, he can only realize the higher life, in and through the State. It is the State which sets free the spiritual forces of the individual by securing for him security, prosperity, and economic independence.

XIII.—THE HERESY OF INTERNATIONALISM.

The second deadly heresy which threatens the dogma of the national State is the heresy of internationalism. It takes the form either of the black internationalism of the Catholic Church or the red internationalism of Social Democracy. Treitschke has fought Roman Catholicism and its champions, the Jesuits, with relentless hate. Through all his writings there sounds the watchword of Voltaire, the spiritual adviser of Frederick the Great, "Ecrasez l'infame," and the battle-cry of Gambetta, "Le clericalisme, voila l'ennemi." Nor is he less bitter against the Socialists. Bismarck and the Kaiser opposed the encroachments of the Social Democracy in a succession of anti-Socialist repressive measures. Treitschke may have disapproved of some of the Sozialisten Gesetze because they defeated their purpose. But he shares the Kaiser's hatred against those irreconcilable enemies of Prussian greatness. The Social Democratic theories of the Jews—Lassalle, Marx, and Bernstein—are one of the most deadly poisons that imperil the constitution of the German body politic.

Events have shown how little even Treitschke realized the strength of the Prussian State and the fanaticism of German nationalism. We know how little his dread of the black International of Catholicism and the red International of Socialism has been justified by the servile attitude of all the Opposition parties, and how, when the crisis came, both Catholics and Socialists proved as Prussian as the Junkers of Pomerania.

XIV.—THE HERESY OF IMPERIALISM.

If it be true that the citizen can only realize himself through the national State, if the whole course of human history is essentially a conflict of national States, and if the rich variety of civilization is made up of the rivalry of those national States, it logically follows that the expansion of any national State into a world empire must necessarily be baneful. The State must, no doubt, expand, but there is a limit to that expansion. The State must not incorporate any alien races which it cannot assimilate. When the State is unable to absorb heterogeneous elements and grows into a world empire, it becomes a danger both to itself and to humanity.

Civilization has been threatened in the past by such monstrous conglomerates of heterogeneous nations. It has been threatened by the Spanish tyranny of Charles V. and the French tyranny of Louis XIV. and Napoleon. It is still threatened to-day by a similar danger. Two national States, Great Britain and Russia, have again grown into world empires. If their ambitions were to succeed, if the greater part of the civilized world were to become either Anglo-Saxon or Russian, there would be an end to the diversity and the liberty of modern civilization. Only the good sword of Prussia and Germany can save humanity from that Anglo-Saxon and Slav peril.

XV.—THE DOGMA OF THE "WILL TO POWER."

But the fact that there is danger in the unlimited expansion of the national State ought not to prevent us from recognizing that irresistible tendency to expansion. The "will to power" is the essence of the State. "The State is power" (Der Staat ist Macht) must ever be the first axiom of political science. Muddled political thinkers, who confuse the spiritual with the temporal activities of man, may hold that the end of the State is social justice, or the diffusion of light, or the propagation of religion, or the advancement of humanity. But the cause of justice, the spread of education, will best be furthered if the State is strong. Only the strong can be just, partial, and enlightened. The sole criterion of political values is strength. It is the supreme merit of Machiavelli that he has been the first to emphasize this cardinal truth. The mortal sin of a State is to be weak. Only the strong man, only a Bismarck, a Richelieu, a Cavour, is a true statesman.

And that strength of the State which is its chief attribute must not be dispersed; that political power must neither be divided nor alienated. Many writers on politics still echo the absurd theory of Montesquieu on the division of the executive, legislative, and the judiciary. Treitschke, following Rousseau, lays down the axiom that the power of the State is indivisible and inalienable.

XVI.—THE END JUSTIFIES THE MEANS.

If the one virtue of the State is to be strong and to assert its strength, it follows that the ethics of the State cannot be the ethics of the individual. The ruler of the State is not the head of a monastery or the president of an academy of fine arts. The end must justify the means, and any means may be employed which will add to the strength of the State. It is the glory of Frederick the Great that he has always had the moral courage of brushing away conventions and scruples to achieve his object, and that he has always had the political insight and wisdom of adjusting the means to the end.

XVII.—WAR AS THE VITAL PRINCIPLE OF POLITICAL LIFE.

Prussia is not, like France, the result of a thousand years of natural growth. It has no definite natural boundaries. The Prussian State is an artificial creation. It has grown and expanded through conquest. It is the Order of the Teutonic Knights, it is the warrior dynasty of the Hohenzollern, who have built up Prussian power. That purely military growth of the Prussian State is made by Treitschke into a universal rule of all political growth. According to him war always was and will remain the master-builder of national life. Other thinkers, like Joseph de Maistre, have glorified war in the name of theology. Treitschke extols it in the name of politics. War not only makes a State: it makes the citizen. The heroic virtues are warlike virtues; they are the outcome of military institutions. It is not war but peace which is the evil. Woe to the nation which allows itself to be deceived by the sentiment and cowardice of pacifists.

XVIII.—THE MONARCHY AS THE IDEAL FORM OF GOVERNMENT.

War is the essential activity of the State. But in order to be strong in war, unity and concentration are essential; they are the conditions of victory. That unity may, no doubt, be achieved under any form of government. It may be achieved under a republic, as it was during the wars of the French Revolution. It may be achieved under an aristocracy, as in the case of Great Britain, which is a monarchy only in name, which, in reality, is a Parliamentary oligarchy, and which is always waging some guerilla in some outlying post of empire. But the fact remains that unity can be best achieved under a monarchic form of government, which concentrates all powers into the hands of the responsible monarch. That is why monarchy is the best form of government.

XIX.—THE ARISTOCRACY AS THE MAINSTAY OF THE MONARCHIC STATE.

A loyal military aristocracy like the Junkers is the mainstay of a national monarchy. An aristocratic constitution of the State is in conformity with the nature of things. Not only all military activities but all social and economic life depends on the distinction of classes, on the existence of different grades corresponding to a difference in natural endowment, in social service. The equality of man not only is an unattainable ideal, it is also an undesirable and a mischievous ideal. Suppress inequality and distinctions and honours and you suppress the main stimulus of human endeavour; you suppress that rich differentiation of social life, that generous rivalry, that noble ambition, which are the conditions of all intensive human activity.

XX.—THE FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY DOGMA OF EQUALITY.

The greatest danger, therefore, to the monarchic and aristocratic constitution of the State arises from the insidious advance of the French revolutionary dogma of equality. The spirit of envy is undermining the social hierarchy in every country. That mean spirit of democratic envy is as old as the democratic institution itself. Ostracism in the nobler elements of the community is as characteristic of the Greek democracy as of the French. All democracies have resented that Aristides should be called the "Just." So far it is only the Prussian State which has escaped from the poisonous doctrine of Rousseau. But even in Prussia the progress of the Gospel according to Saint Marx is a disquieting symptom. To defend the prerogatives of the Junkers against the assaults of the Social Democracy must therefore be one of the main political concerns of a patriotic Prussian.