the soldier, became the German criterion for the organization of society and, indeed, of the world. The soldier and war were regular institutions. Nor did the Reformation, classical Humanism, Science, Art and Philosophy prevail over Theocracy in Germany so thoroughly as they prevailed in the West; for the German people accepted the Reformation only in part, and the German Lutheran Reformation adapted itself to Catholicism. Thus there arose a sort of Caesaro-Papism, albeit distinct from the Russian Caesaro-Papism. In course of time pan-German Imperialism took the place of Lessing’s, Herder’s, Goethe’s, Kant’s, and Schiller’s humanitarian ideals, which were derived from secular and Western evolution and from participation in it. The catchword “Berlin-Baghdad” represented an endeavour to secure mastery over Europe, and thus, eventually, over Asia and Africa also—an endeavour which, in itself, expresses an ideal of the ancient world. Germany cherished and sought to realize, even geographically, the ideal of the Roman Empire. The Western ideal tends, on the contrary, to organize the whole of mankind and, above all, to link Europe with America and with other continents. In the world war they were thus linked.
In doctrine and policy pan-Germanism declined to recognize the right of peoples to independence; Germany was to be lord and master over all. In its expansiveness, pan-Germanism proclaimed the multi-racial State as ideal, an ideal of which Austria-Hungary, alongside of Germany, was to be a living exemplification—without forgetting the Russian State which had been fashioned, in so remarkable a degree, after the Prussian model. The Allies, on the other hand, proclaimed the right of all States, small as well as big, to independence; and the outcome of their programme is the League of Nations, which is the culmination of the democratic ideals formulated and, to some extent, realized in America. Philosophically, the Germans rejected the idea of natural rights and substituted for it that of historical rights. Though Kant was recognized as the leading philosopher, his inclination towards natural right and towards the standards of Rousseau was spurned as humanitarian; and Darwin’s doctrine was invoked in support of historical right and of the theory of mechanical evolution founded on the “survival of the fittest,” or strongest. Thus war and the waging of war came to be looked upon as divine ordinances. The English naturalist’s theory was invoked by Prussian militarism in support of its aristocratic military postulates, of which the main outcome was the so-
