Page:The ways of war - Kettle - 1917.pdf/251

 man affection, goes about to blaspheme all the intimate sanctities of civilisation, one feels justified in summoning him to the bar of his own Darwinism. Among modern nations Prussia has had the strange experience of having a Gospel of Relentless Force preached to her by invalids and degenerates. Her metaphysic has been dictated from a hospital ward.

The one thing you find in Treitschke, reverberating through page after page, is the doctrine of a Chosen People. He used his learning, which was not inconsiderable, his prestige, and his influence to keep hammering into Prussia the belief that she was the chosen race, the seed of the superman, the predestined ruler of Western civilisation. He preached the ruthless supremacy of the State, and the sacrifice to military power of all humane activities. He regarded Holland, Belgium, Denmark, Luxemburg as fragments of Germany that had been temporarily broken off, and must be recovered. He taught those whom he influenced to dream of a Vandal Empire, straddled across all Europe from Dunkirk to Belgrade. Domination, domination, and again domination: that is the message of Treitschke. Were he alive he would have rejoiced blatantly at the tearing up of the "scrap of paper" which stood for nothing except the conscience of Europe and the integrity of Belgium.

I understand that we are to have solemn and careful studies of his works issued in English. A