Page:The ways of war - Kettle - 1917.pdf/246

 It would be a simple weariness to multiply passages in greater abundance. They are all of the same texture, for, despite incoherence and contradictions, they all come from the same centre of corruption, the Will-to-Power. It is a long-drawn-out Metaphysics of Bullying, nothing less and nothing more.

One has only to think of the soil into which seed like this was dropped in order to understand the harvest of desolation that the swords are now reaping. Think of Prussia, flattered by all the world—even by Matthew Arnold—into regarding herself as the chosen of the Lord. Think of the unearned prosperity brought by the French tribute, of the raw egotism, the coarse insolence bred by it. Think of how the old Germanic racial chauvinism was nourished by the theories of Gobineau as freshened by the appalling Chamberlain. Think of how French intellect has been boycotted in England and America for thirty years, while troops of translators, critics and publishers ran round canvassing first-class reputations for fourth-rate German scholars. Think of the tawdry pretensions of Berlin, of the infinite vulgarity of the Alley and Column of Victory.

Is it to be wondered at that a creed like Nietzsche's, let loose in such a world, has succeeded? Reading it, Krupp feels himself a veritable knight of the Holy Ghost. Kaiser Wil