Page:The Spirit of the Chinese People.djvu/15

Rh Last of all, I have included as an appendix an essay on practical politics,—an essay on "The War and the Way out." Knowing full well the danger of entering into the arena of practical politics, I nevertheless do it, because in order to prove the value of the Chinese civilisation, I want to show how the study of the Chinese civilisation can help to solve the problem facing the world to-day,—the problem of saving the civilisation of Europe from bankruptcy. In fact I want to show that the study of Chinese, of Chinese books and Chinese literature is not only a hobby for sinologues.

In this essay, I have tried to show the moral causes which have brought on this war; for until the true moral causes of this war are understood and remedied, there can be no hope of finding a way out of it. The moral causes of this war, I have tried in my essay to show, are the worship of the mob in Great Britain and the worship of might in Germany. I have, in my essay, laid emphasis more upon the worship of the mob in Great Britain, than the worship of might in Germany, because looking impartially upon the question, it seems to me that it is the worship of the mob in Great Britain, which is responsible for the worship of might in Germany; in fact, the worship of the mob in all European countries and especially in Great Britain, it was this which has created the enormous German Militarism which everybody now hates and denounces.

Now let me first of all say here that it is the moral fibre in the German nation, their intense love of