IN

OUR antipathy to Germany's predatory programme we are apt to miss the ideal side of it which justi fies it in the eyes of Germans of cultivation. Professors Harnack and Euken and their ilk are not simply possessed with the mania teutonicus, albeit it is to be feared that even in them the infection is serious. For such Germans the war is waged, as Bernhardi declares, “for the highest interests... of mankind," as well as for German aggrandisement. Conquest is for them the indispensable means of lifting the world to a higher plane. It is the means which nature employs, and therefore the right means. Said the eminent chemist, Ostwald, in the early months of the war, "Germany

.. has attained

to a stage of civilisation far higher than that of all other peoples. This war will, in the future, compel these other peoples to participate, under the form of German social efficiency, in a civilisation higher than their own." Other Germans, disciples of the humanities rather than the natural sciences, colour the prospect more warmly. "We hope," said Pastor Conrad, of the Kaiser Wilhelm Church in Berlin in 1915, "by the victory of our arms, to bring about a new efflorescence of humanity

Vol. XLVII, No. 1.

through the German nature, which will thus prove itself fruitful of blessings for other nations as well." Such men have a vision of one hundred and eighty millions of Russians going to school under German masters, of the waste places of Turkey redeemed and through German engineering blooming beyond their fairest estate in ancient days, of new industrial and cultural centres built up at the ends of the earth, as at Kiao Chao, and of the inferior peoples of Asia and Africa lifted to higher forms of life through German system and German science. Their ideal is of an improved world order which shall be not only efficient but benevolent, which shall instruct the ignorant, develop the weak, and bring plenty and comfort to the world, an order in which, as in Plato's "Republic," the wise (the philosopher kings of Potsdam) shall rule, the brave (the German common people, and the Germanic element in other civilised countries, provided these rise to their opportunity) shall defend, and the hand workers (the Latin and other less advanced races) shall find their highest good in obedient service of the whole; an order in which, as Geibel sang half a century ago, "German culture may bring healing to the nations." It is

under the spell of this vision that Bernhardi is able to exclaim, “The brutal incidents inseparable from every war vanish completely before the idealism of the main result."

Now, this ideal is not only good Platonism, but was also good Judaism at Israel's most brilliant literary period. According to the prophets, Jerusalem, through her triumphant force, was to be the centre of power and blessing for the world, and in consequence was to be looked to with reverent desire by all nations. "Out of Zion" was to go forth the law, after the Messiah had put down all the opposition of the wicked, and reproved "strong nations afar off." Then, under the sway of Zion's victorious king, were to follow the days of peace, when swords were to be beaten into ploughshares, and the nations should not "learn war any more."

Yet we democratic peoples revolt from this programme in its modern rendering, and strive by bayonets and mellinite shells to bring it to naught! This, to the German idealist, is plain proof of our depravity, tempered somewhat by our ignorance. The real trouble, as he views it, is that we do not wish humanity to have the best things. We prefer that races should decay like the Haitians, or herd together without rational organisation, as in the slums of Philadelphia and New York, in order that our favoured classes may exploit them-an opinion which he shares with the class socialists. It is with an ethical and religious fervour, therefore, that German idealists join the Junkers in battling against Entente claims and forces. "Why do the heathen [we who wickedly oppose Germany's divinely given mission for world elevation] rage, and the peoples [of France and England, Italy and America] imagine a vain thing? . The Lord shall have them in derision!"*

*Cf. the lines of the poet Philippi: "We execute God Almighty's will, and the edicts

If we would understand the Germans, it is well to look occasionally through their eyes. The late William James counselled, when dealing with a sincere opponent, getting first the other's point of view, and then moving the point. The German idealist's point of view is evidently interest in a higher world civilisation; and, for one, I quite agree that we are inferior folk if we ignore that interest, and evil folk if we oppose it. The "moving of the point" consists in showing that Germany's plan for realising her dream converts it into a nightmare for the rest of the world, for to the conquered it is a programme of desolation and spiritual humiliation. The higher human welfare has never been effected by conquest, and in the nature of the case cannot be. On the part of the victors conquest develops haughtiness and harshness; on the part of the van. quished it results either in resentment and smouldering revolt or in servility and treachery, according to the type of mind brought under the yoke. Abundant illustrations of this truth are to be found in the history of the Central European powers, as, indeed, in the history of the world. A higher civilisation can no more be produced by smashing blows of the mailed fist than flowers and fruit by biting winter blasts. The world good, if effected at all, must be sought by friendly co-operation, not by compulsion. Mutual service, now seen to be the fundamental principle of social development as well as of ethical religion, must characterise this greatest of all undertakings. While we rightly insist, however, on the democratic and fraternal character of sound social progress, we should not lose sight of the fact that the goal to which the best German thought

of His justice we will fulfil, imbued with holy rage, in vengeance upon the ungodly. We thank Thee, Lord God with thine iron rod we smite all Thine enemies in the face."

directs itself, so far at least as it involves the collective welfare of mankind, is the right goal.

Over against this ideal what have we Americans to offer the worldindeed, to offer ourselves? Time was when our situation provided unitary aims for us, aims which often we pursued with little collective consideration-independence, conquest of the wilderness, political liberty, even for the slave. But what national objective have we had since the close of the Civil War? Collectively we seem to have run along on the momentum of earlier and more strenuous times. Meanwhile, certain foreign observers have been far from blind to a lack in us. A friend of Professor Shailer Mathews, we are told, visiting Germany in 1903 in the interest of the St. Louis Exposition, was there informed repeatedly that "we were not a nation; that we were interfering with their foreign trade, and that they would have to fight us. "Not a nation"! that is, a people with no real national life, no collective interests of strong appeal, no unitary purposes or ideals. To such critics we are but a rubbish heap of miscellaneous populations, lower in grade even than Austria-Hungary, because we have not even a dominant race, still less a government superior to the will of the masses.

We are not likely to plead guilty to this impeachment. We can see the ignorance and provincialism of our critics, and their bias, also, due to their mediæval tradition that a real state is necessarily feudal at heart. Moreover, we have seen within a year a rallying to the cause of democracy on the part of our people from ocean to ocean, a steadily increasing unity and firmness of resolution in a cause espoused in all openness of vision and sobriety of judgment, a swift response to the government's appeals for service and sacrifice-all of which betoken clearly that at least the capacity for national purpose and

enterprise is present with us still.

Nevertheless, there is enough truth in the German indictment to call for careful searchings of heart, the more so that our own more serious prophets have spoken to somewhat similar effect. For one thing, it is all too true that America has been forcibly fed with new and heterogeneous citizens beyond her natural appetite, and, it is to be feared, beyond her immediate power to assimilate. A more serious thing, however, is that multitudes of our people, natives as well as foreignborn, appear to regard their country as a mere arena for individual, and commonly selfish, aggrandisement— essentially the German view of us. Winston Churchill, in his bitter-tasting but tonic tale, A Far Country, makes his hero say, "I have been a typical American, regarding my country as the happy hunting-ground of enlightened self-interest, as a func tion of my desires." All too many intelligent Americans, even to-day, would find no satire in these words. "Why, of course," they would doubtless say: "to look out for number one and fetch him out on top, is what we are all after"-an affirmation that the average citizen is a scrambling adventurer.

The strain of these war days, however, is revealing to our calloused minds the unworthiness of much that we have accepted hitherto with all too little challenge. The profiteer for example-now so justly odious, with his blindness to the common good, his squads of malingerers drawing excessive wages for marking time while he collects his fifteen per cent. profit thereon from the government -is actually doing only what is ordinarily approved, or connived at, by the business community. Why is it wrong now? Because it brings distress upon others? But it commonly brings distress upon others, as we have had abundant reason to know. The victims of industrial exploitation are ever with us, and their cries are

by no means inaudible, though remote enough too often to dull ears and somnolent consciences.

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The incompetent official, too, is showing in his real character, with his smug content to jog along in the harness of red tape, his selfish estimate of political office as a place, not a post (still less a trust); a berth, not a task; a reward for clannish service, not an opportunity for social service, that is, for a collective achievement worthy of reward. How we have been humiliated of late by the exposure of feebleness where we looked for ability, of pettiness where there should have been vision, of small pride of rank and eagerness for personal credit where the situation I called for whole-hearted devotion to cause unsurpassed in importance and sovereign appeal! Eight months after entering the war part of our recruits drilling with dummy guns, in unconscious but tragic irony of the unpreparedness teachings of our doctrinaire pacifists, and in painful contrast with "Kitchener's first one hundred thousand," enrolled, trained, equipped, and put into the firing line, under even greater difficulties, within a like period; young soldiers dying of pneumonia through lack of clothing and care, while a government unable to meet their needs forbade them the use of civilian garb and aid; bureau chiefs more concerned about the way United States troops will compare with foreign forces in appearance and latest fashion of equipment in 1919 than in keeping the world cause from ruin in 1918; even our big private industries repeatedly coming short in their vaunted efficiency (two hundred submarine chasers, for example, developing but two-thirds of their contract speed), and their plants and military stores becoming in a melancholy series of instances the seemingly easy prey of German-paid incendiaries; our railroads, too, so often lauded as models for the world, breaking down quickly

under a national strain, albeit their cost has often been twice that of equally good roads abroad-these things and their like, with their seamy sides of private interest, served at the expense of public welfare, and of official incompetence due to unconcern as to national affairs, take on new aspects in the glow of awakened patriotism and humiliating disappointment. That alleged "practical" temper of Americans, by reference to which politicians and promoters have been wont to dismiss disdainfully really scientific plans for improvement, is now seen to be largely racial myopia-Anglo-Saxon indisposition to look beyond things near to larger and equally certain things farther on, lethargic aversion to thinking things through to their consequences. If the French had been practical in the Anglo-Saxon sense, the world would now be Teuton, or SO near it that only the desperate efforts of a generation could retrieve the situation.

The day for testing the German judgment of us is at hand. Is the United States of America little more than a geographical expression (as many of our pacifists seem to think), a mere area peopled with a hodgepodge of immigrants, a magnified Klondike or Kimberley? Our future depends upon the answer. Let us hope that a great disaster is not in store for us, to teach us by the methods of nature's hard school the folly of indifference to collective ends and efficiency.

That lack of national spirit; that absorption in private concerns and indifference to collective interests, referred to above, the functions of the state being regarded as merely those of a policeman, or, say, the keeper of a gambling house-that is an extreme form of what is called “individualism." Its merits (especially when somewhat restrained by human feeling) in the way of stimulation of production, initiative, and forceful char