Page:"The next war"; an appeal to common sense (IA thenextwarappeal01irwi).pdf/38

 toward any critical point on the frontiers. Her great steel works, making and exporting the tools and machinery of civilian life, could be changed over with a minimum of trouble into factories for munitions of war. She specialized, indeed, on munition making—furnished the rifles and cannon for the little wars of the far countries.

The “psychological preparation” imposed by the rulers of Germany was just as thorough. A state-controlled pulpit, a state-controlled press, state-controlled teachers and university professors, hammered or insinuated into the German people exaggerated, conceited patriotism and the thought of war—the “Religion of Valor.” With the national talent for intellectual speculation, the Germans of the governing class worked out a philosophy which sounds quaint to practical-minded Americans, but upon which men lived and died. The state was a thing with a soul. It was the duty of the subject, his highest end, to advance the glory and interest of the state, no matter if that glory made every subject poorer and less happy. We, of course, look upon the state as a means of getting together and promoting the happiness and security of its members. If it does not generally have that result, it is nothing. When it comes to promoting the interests of the state—this philosophy held—all ordinary rules of morals are off. Acts like theft, murder, unchastity, cruelty, calling for severe punishment when