never knowing how to grasp and understand the present'; now it is-or lately was-fervently romantic anew, straining towards the future and its promise that the 'superman' shall be born, the forceful German generation that shall hold the world in thrall.

It were long to follow in detail the ravages of this new Idealism, the moral perversities due to this neoRomantic Individualism. 'God is dead,' proclaimed Nietzsche. And his disciples, aristocrats of the spirit, Künstler, claim all license to luxuriate amid 'the fulness of phenomena,' and to 'live themselves out.' Religion is gone; 'good' is that which is advantageous to self; and moral values are but degrees of strength and weakness. A vague theism, a 'kingdom of God' is indeed still preached. An Eucken can revive the moral and spiritual order of Fichte; but Fichte declared that the moral order itself is God. We need no other, and can conceive no other.' And Eucken but presents the conception of a living and personal God as a consolation for those in deepest sorrow. Destructive criticism has given place to constructive engines of material force. Textual and historical criticism has given place to the refutation and rejection of Christian morals. There is a constant demand from many quarters that a new religion shall come into being. Mysticism, intuition, the acknowledgment that instinct-the subconscious, or unconscious -is supreme, mainly go to the making of it. Nor is any hesitation felt as to whether the subconscious may not be the source of animal tendencies rather than of divine. The ape and tiger must not die. For Nietzsche says:

'Man requires that which is worst within him, to attain that which is best; his worst instincts are the best portion of his might. . . . Man must become better and worse.' 'Here is the new law, oh my brethren, which I promulgate unto you: Become hard. For creative spirits are hard. And you must find a supreme blessedness in impressing the mark of your hand, in inscribing your will, upon thousands and thousands, as on soft wax.'

We are warned by Burke not to bring an impeachment against a whole nation. The majority of Germans, no doubt, still hold by tradition. The simple and unsophisticated among them bid us remember that the

Emperor, their 'Peace-Emperor, is 'pious.' But he has learnt the lesson of Bismarck, and is a Hohenzollern. Frederick William the Fourth, equally romantic with William the Second, declared in 1848: I will never permit a scrap of paper (the constitution he was offering) to interpose between the Lord God on High and myself.' The grandfather of the Emperor, returning to Berlin after the victory of Sadowa, opened the Chambers by thanking Providence for the grace which had aided Prussia to drive away from its frontiers the invasion of the enemy-the self-defence being a carefully planned onslaught, that the hegemony of Germany might be wrested from Austria. Take away from me my convictions,' said Bismarck, and you have lost your Chancellor. Deprive me of my union with God, and tomorrow I will pack up, and grow oats at Varzin.' Such religion is mystic fetichism. He, and the House of Hohenzollern, instead of regarding themselves as instruments of destiny, of God, should have considered Bacon's statement that 'it were better to have no opinion of God at all than such an opinion as is unworthy of him'; they should have remembered that God is the God not of one, but of all nations, and the God of mercy. Whereas the Emperor's famous address to his army in China was but a paraphrase of Nietzsche's Verily, let my happiness, my liberty, rush onward like the hurricane. My enemies will believe that it is the Spirit of Evil raging above their heads.'

As his more recent speeches show, the Emperor has studied Houston Stewart Chamberlain, who is one of those who require a new religion, of German origin, and suited to the Germans. And there are other signs that the Emperor is ready to favour and foster such a religion, since it would be the proclamation of a Teutonic Jehovah, guiding his German elect to world-victory, with the House of Hohenzollern as warrior high-priests. Or in place of Jehovah, read Odin. Renan wrote to Strauss: Your German race always seems to believe in Walhalla.' Heine, before Renan, declared that 'Christianity-and that is its fairest merit-has to some degree softened the brutal Germanic delight in warfare, but could not destroy it; and when once that taming talisman, the Cross, is broken, then once more rattles out the wildness of the

old warrior, the mad Berserker rage.' Then 'Thor with his giant hammer springs forth at last, and breaks Gothic domes to atoms.' He prophesied, not indeed the present war, but democratic revolution in Germany; a return to Paganism, to the ancestral religion of blood and iron, when once it was divulged that transcendental Idealism was but a veiled and godless Pantheism.

There is one religion, at any rate, common to the intellectual few, and the simple many, in present Germany. The German race is the elect of destiny, say the one; of God, repeat the other. Neo-Romanticists, racial mystics, may dream with Gobineau of the conquering Aryan race, on whose shoulders rests the future of humanity. That which is not German is created to be enslaved.' H. S. Chamberlain somewhat modifies the theme. The French and the Slav are also Aryans ; indeed any one, if so he wills, and fitly equips himself, can be an Aryan in the spirit, as it were by an elective affinity, and await the religion that is to be. But this is all too subtle for present Germany. The Aryan, the Superman, is the German. Pangermanism is the simple and sufficient creed.

As we have it in an endless series of pamphlets, Pangermanism is frowned on or favoured by the bureaucracy, according as occasion serves. These pamphlets, and the periodical organs of the various leagues, with their lists of approving professors and magnates, are equally monotonous and nauseating. One of these organs bears, or bore, as legend and ideal aim: From the Skaw to the Adriatic! From Boulogne to Narwa! From Besançon to the Black Sea!' But that is little, compared with the demands put forth in the pamphlets. Take a single one for a sample, as far back as 1895, the better to secure modesty and moderation, if possible. In it we learn that the great German Confederation of the future is a national State, which includes the majority of Germans living in Europe. Its inhabitants are not exclusively German, but it is ruled exclusively by Germans. Thus by allowing only Germans to exercise political rights and to acquire landed property, the German people will regain the feeling which they had in the Middle Ages-that of being a ruling race. They, however, gladly tolerate in their midst the presence of foreigners for the performance

of lower manual labour. And thus will grow up a people 'capable of transmitting to humanity in the ages to come all the treasures of German culture.' This, at least, is more moderate than Treitschke. The civilising of a barbarous nation'-and all are barbarous except Germans-is the offer of alternatives, 'either to merge itself in the dominant nation, or to suffer extermination.' But then, what blessings will result to the conquered, if they choose aright! Prussia, nobly exercising its hegemony over the United States of Europe,' will guard Europe against the competition of Asia, and of those other United States, whose commercial rivalry needs to be checked.

The Germans are naturally systematical. France subdued, and Russia, it was to be the turn of the robber and peddler State to which we unfortunately belong. And the 'peaceful penetration' of Brazil would in good time furnish a casus belli against the United States. 'Never have the Germans given up an idea without fighting it through in all its consequences,' Heine declared long ago. Only there is no sign of a Moltke or a Bismarck among present Germans. Never have the Germans been psychologists,' said Nietzsche. They have failed to isolate and attack each single Power in turn, as they have failed to grasp the true character and resources of the nations which they would forcibly sweep aside. H. S. Chamberlain cites Luther's dictum that the Germans are a blind people,' and Herder's epigram that the Germans think much, and-not at all.' The German is not a good critic,' he adds. Acuteness is not a national possession of the Teutons.' He regrets that, 'entering recently into the history of the world,' they have not yet had time to ask themselves how things are going on in their immediate neighbourhood.' Till they find such time, they will sport on the edge of the abyss, as if it were a flowery mead.' Such carelessness is part of their character; and he finds it almost praiseworthy, since the Greeks and the Romans before them rushed to their ruin, totally unconscious 'how the pressure of events was removing them from the face of the earth, lively to the last, mighty and proudly sure of triumph to the last.' This is lyrical, after the manner of his ethnical mysticism. But he has said it.

Upon illusion, follows disillusion. How soon will the Germans awake to the truth of things? They know the Greek tragedies, and yet forget the penalty that befalls the overweening. Trained in history, they are acquainted with the rise and fall of Spain, of Louis XIV, of Napoleon, aiming at universal empire; and yet will not derive the due lesson. Napoleon they hate, as the cause of their long suffering; and, admiring, would imitate. There are blots on the moral scutcheon of all the nations; but the Germans would deliberately and consciously accomplish, on the largest scale, that which other nations have done in the past, almost unconsciously, and as it were by hazard. Machiavellians, they reprobate the growth of the British Empire, and would fain use force to wrest it away for themselves. On one occasion, at least, Treitschke deviated into moral sanity. The future course of human history cannot consist in the creation of a single dominant power; the ideal we should aim at is an orderly society of peoples.' But Treitschke, no doubt, meant that this orderly society should lie under the hegemony, the heel, of Prussia. In what way then, and how soon, schooled by adversity, will they confess their error? If the State,' he says, 'can no longer accomplish what it wills, it falls into ruin and anarchy.' Will they, at less cost than this, repudiate that national egoism, that 'will to Power,' that instinct of domination which is the fruitful mother of illusion, confusion, and lies? Will they admit at length that there is a political as well as a commercial morality; that patriotism can too often be, as Dr Johnson said, 'the last refuge of a scoundrel'? The Germans must be freed from within, the attempt from without is useless.' Meanwhile the friends without-lovers of liberty two of them, and the third well in the way of becoming so, friends made foes against their will-prosecute this war in order to end war, it may be; to break down the evil spirit of militarism which has beset a great people overwrought by pride, arrogance, infatuation, and megalomania.