Page:The guilt of William Hohenzollern.djvu/50

46 in the days of its defeat. He represented it as a race of ideal heroes, far superior to the English, whom he treated with scorn as a race of dirty shopkeepers. In point of fact, however, the Germans are no more heroes than any other people; nor, on the other hand, are they more quarrelsome bullies than their enemies in the world-war.

One thing, at any rate, must be admitted: If the opponents of Germany have showed at times the same imperialistic tendencies, the same bent towards war and conquest, then they were not morally superior to Germany—a country so intellectual after all, in spite of the German Professor!

One thing they well understood, especially the English and the Americans—they knew very well how to calculate the results of their actions. In the age of Imperialism they only prosecuted a war-policy when that policy did not endanger their own country. They had too much business capacity to conjure up a war when war might mean their own ruin. They were solid capitalists, not reckless adventurers who set all on a single throw. We see, therefore, that it is false to assert that capitalism necessarily means the lust for war with all its perils. It only means that under certain definite conditions.

German capitalism alone grew up under conditions which bound it closely to the most powerful and selfconfident militarism in the world. Up to the outbreak of the world-war there was no militarism in the Anglo-Saxon world. France and Russia, indeed, had plenty of it; but neither of these felt confident of victory—the one remembered the crushing defeat of 1870–71, and the other that of 1904–5.

Its connection with the strongest and most arrogant