MILITARISM, PRUSSIAN AND
OTHER
Prussian Militarism must be destroyed. This is the catch-word of to-day. Prussian Militarism had been in existence generations before the present war, but nobody outside Germany thought that it was such an intolerable evil. Scrutinise the history of the ten years' quarrel between this country and Germany, and you will not find a word said against Prussian Militarism. The attack from this side was directed against the German navy, never against the German army. The army was a necessity; indeed, often the argument would be: the navy was to Britain what the army was to Germany—vital to the existence of the country. The same attitude was observable in other countries. Read our French ex-Comrade Sembat's famous book: Faites la paix, si non faite le roi ("Make peace, or else make a King"), and you Ywill find there a fervid defence of the big German army as a necessity for a country which has two frontiers to defend against strong and watchful enemies. Was it different in America? Not at all. Colonel Roosevelt was an admirer of the Prussian military system, and no "exchange" professor ever spoke a word against it.
Now it is different. Now Prussian 1filitarism is the enemy and ought to be crushed. This is repeated in Britain, where the German army was bracketed with the British navy as the sheet anchor of national existence; in France, where Marcel Sembat is now Minister; and in America, where Roosevelt blows the war trumpet. All of a sudden the discovery has been made that Prussian Militarism is a curse not only to the world, but to Germany herself, and that the war is really a world-wide crusade against it. Why? you may ask. And the reply given is: because Prussian Militarism is merely an instrument of the Prussian Junker domination—the domination of a feudal class which has no business to live in the modern world, which has imposed itself upon the German nation, and which has caused the present war out of sheer feudal lust of conquest.
The circumstance that this discovery had been made only
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