Judged merely from a material point of view, the decrease in the value of human life and property brought about by war, and in most cases carried far into the period of peace immediately following, inflicts the gravest damage on the nation. The instances quoted by Professor Nicolai refer particularly to this lack of respect shown towards enemy life and property; he mentions here the notorious Order of the Day of Prince Rupprecht, enjoining his soldiers not to give quarter, and adds Professor J. Jastrow's remark: 'Our soldiers do not like to make the English prisoners,' a phrase which occurs in that author's Deductions from the Number of Our Prisoners. He then relates two personal experiences:

An officer, otherwise a most respectable man, told me, with a curious kind of procrastinated horror, that he had once threatened to shoot his landlord if a lost purse were not found again. But in war, people of whose personal innocence one is convinced (such as hostages) are shot in cold blood; and when, at the very beginning of the war, a Prussian officer preferred shooting himself to obeying commands of this character, his comrades interpreted his 'self-immolation for moral reasons' as merely hypersensitive weakness.

Explaining the technique of foraging, an officer told our author:

You go into a shop and ask the price, pointing with your revolver either at what you want or at the salesman; and you say 'This thing is worth ten pfennigs.' That is paying up honorably.

The illustrations chosen, are by no means dramatic or exaggerated. I could choose much worse and many more. It is their casual acceptance as natural actions which is so revolting. It is the probability of their continuance in times of 'peace' which has combined the rest of the world against the militarism of which they are the fruit.

While Dr. Nicolai does not criticize

in positive terms German colonizing methods, he makes it nevertheless abundantly clear what he thinks of them and shows in particular a fine understanding for the spirit governing the relations between the English colonies and their motherland. He says:

England does not possess colonies because she once hoisted there the Union Jack; she owns them because the people living there both speak and think in English. In our days the English Crown can scarcely be said to 'own' the English colonies; and, at the best, its rule is only nominal; but still, England lives in the hearts of her colonists, and in their hearts lives the English idea of a world-wide Empire.

The German colonial authorities - if there are any after the war will be well advised to take the following sentence to heart: 'Only those keep their colonies who know how to make friends by their justice.' Turning to the nation as a whole, Professor Nicolai finishes up his chapter on colonies as follows:

Every German interested in the expansion of his nation should try to answer the following questions:

Firstly: Why did the Boers not help Germany?

Secondly: Why do the majority of German emigrants go to America or to English colonies, instead of going to German colones?

Thirdly: Why has German commerce become so powerful in all English colonies and not in any single German one?....

The Kaiser has not been slow in telling or showing the world what he thinks of international agreements about warfare. How Dr. Nicolai judges of the question is clearly expressed in the following sentence:

Everybody may think what he pleases about the value and importance of such conventions. But once they have been concluded, any discussion about them has to stop, because from that moment onwards any kind of violation not only

damages the adversary, but stains irreparably one's own honor. For this reason nothing is so sad in this war as the violation of Belgian neutrality, the submarine war, and the employment of poisonous gases. Harking back to what he said about international peace depending on international democracy, Professor Nicolai points out that international law is subject to a similar condition. He says:

Law among individuals is only possible if they acknowledge some political community, law among nations is impossible unless they acknowledge some community above the nations.

Referring to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's warning about the submarines and Admiral Fitzgerald's rejoinder to it, our writer becomes very outspoken. These are his words:

When a few years ago Sir Arthur Conan Doyle warned England to take care, for by means of submarines England's imports could be cut off and she could be starved, Admiral C. C. Penrose Fitzgerald wrote, 'He considered such measures superfluous since he could not believe that any civilized nation would torpedo unarmed and defenseless merchantmen.' Poor, sentimental Fitzgerald! Thou, too, hast thought war to be a kind of game according to the rules of some congress - and thousands have to pay now for thy foolishness. But perhaps even to-day there are still people left who would rather have made a mistake with old Fitzgerald than win a victory by means of submarines.

Professor Nicolai's chapters on Chauvinism are full of bitter regret for the sad havoc which war-fury has brought about in the mind of the German nation. He defines Chauvinism as follows:

The incapacity for surmounting, by means of his reason, the collective notions of his own nation, and the inability to subdue, by means of his character, his hatred against foreign nations, makes a man that kind of false patriot who is called a Chauvinist.

With reference to the outburst of 1914 he says:

as

Such suggestions during a war self-praise, exaggeration of the enemy's strength, or lies about his criminal cruelty have been successful everywhere, and the war of 1914 was more carefully prepared than any other war before; and patriotism rose to an enormous height. But another result which I hope was not expected came about at the same time. The hatred of the nations increased in an equal degree. The saddest part of it all is, that the suggestions will disappear, but the hatred will remain. . . . There was an entire breakdown of the intellect. People simply believed everything, and by and by no rumor was too absurd to be credited. And this maniacal paralysis of the intelligence seized German science as well, which at least should have been used to exact investigation

of the truth.

As a most horrible instance of Chauvinism the author reports a personal experience of his own:

A little while ago one of our best educated officers, a man of the highest standing (whose name I will not mention for the sake of his great merits, since I am certain he will regret this question as soon as peace is reëstablished), asked me whether it was not possible to throw bombs with cholera germs or plague bacilli behind the enemy lines. When I told him I did not consider the idea very practical or even human, he answered me with a contemptuous movement of his hand: 'What have we got to do with humanity in this war? Germany is entitled to do anything she likes.' And I am sorry to say there are millions who think like him. Thus a staff-surgeon at Graudenz told me he had often wondered whether he might not somehow or other slip into Russia and inoculate the Russians with live germs; everything was permissible against that kind of spawn.'

There have been abundant indications that the greater part of Germany has fully realized how ridiculous the Hymn of Hate has made them look in the eyes of the world, and it is interesting to hear what Professor Nicolai has to say about it.

In Lissauer's Hymn of Hate against England not even an attempt has been made to show why this humorous gentleman really hates England; the whole so-called song consists in a continuous barking repe

tition of his hatred, and after coming to the end of his versicles, one feels like asking their writer: 'Why is it you do hate England?' Mr. Lissauer himself said once that his verses should not be spoken, but hissed. I quite approve his criticism. There has always been the breed of snakes and vipers, but nobody would have thought so many of them were able to speak German. The Roman historian Julius Florus reports that the old Germans used to tear out the tongues of slanderous poets, 'in order to stop the poisonous snake from hissing.' We are more mild to-day; but let us do all we can to make people forget that this infamous song was once as popular in Germany as the words 'Hiddekk'* or 'Gott strafe England.'

Professor Nicolai points out with particular bitterness that the intellectual circles of Germany outdid the lower classes considerably in their outbursts of Chauvinism. He says:

When the beer-swilling Philistine, sitting at his accustomed table with his cronies, asserts in bombastic tones, that we are the bravest, most chivalrous, most intelligent, in short, the best nation from every point of view, we may overlook that, and allow, that after all his horizon does not extend beyond the walls of his pothouse. But when a man like Richard Dehmel announces that the Germans alone had a noble right to rule the world, and quite forgets that in days gone by he also believed that the ultimate purpose of the world was not to be ruled ... we have to own regretfully, that in this instance Chauvinism has wrought a cruel deed, by bringing down noble and free minds to the level of those who know nothing in this world outside their own pint-pot.

Quoting Fichte, according to whom 'Kultur is the exercise of all forces directed towards the purpose of complete liberty' and Nietzsche who said 'Kultur is the harmony of mutually resisting forces,' the author shows that Kultur and Chauvinism cannot exist together. Kultur is international; it is unthinkable if it is limited by political frontiers. Scientific and

*Hiddekk is formed of the initials of the words composing the sentence Hauptsache ist dass die Engländer Keile kriegen (The principal thing is that the English get a hiding).

technical Kultur in particular have ceased long ago to be national, as may be seen in the case of the international bureaus for meteorological, seismographical or astronomical observations. True Art, especially music, is no less international.

We can be either patriots or men of Kultur. We can say 'A fig for all Kultur, if only my fatherland still knows how to hit with the sword.' He who talks in this strain is at least a logical barbarian (and only inconsequential, perhaps, in so far as he struggles against the name of barbarian). But he who says patriotic culture is near to his heart should reflect, that it is connected by a thousand hidden threads with foreign countries, and therefore must necessarily suffer by the rupture of international relations.

Dr. Nicolai, as might be imagined, does not suffer fools gladly. After disposing of Lissauer and the yapping doggerel of his Hymn of Hate in the few trenchant sentences I have quoted, he subjects a good many German 'war-poets' both of the present and of former wars-to severe criticism, and easily establishes the fact how scarce real and good war poetry is. He arrives finally at the following conclusion:

Songs of war, as Goethe rightly says, are really occasional verse; if they are to be good, the occasion has to be good; and our modern war poems are bad for the same reason as Goethe's occasional poems were bad when he sang in celebration of the birthday of some very unimportant Weimarian princess.

Turning to Bernhardi, our author strikes a far more serious note. He says:

People like Bernhardi had the courage to say what thousands of others thought, what they pronounced in their pothouse, but were afraid of saying quite so loudly. I believe and hope that Bernhardi's book does not express the opinion of the best Germans, but certainly of the majority, and certainly of the most influential.

Those critics who thought, in 1914,

that some of us attached too much importance to Bernhardi in our writings about the war at that date, will now realize what his value really was, in the estimation of a compatriot entirely competent to speak. That he was accurate in his forecasts has been proved by nearly every movement of the German General Staff since they invaded and violated Belgium.

Of many other interesting chapters in Dr. Nicolai's book I have here no space to speak, but I trust more will soon be heard about his observations as to the true meaning of 'the struggle for life'; his analysis of the effect of the German Army upon the German nation; his disquisition on the racial foundations of patriotism with special reference to the so-called 'Germanic' stock; his description of European civilization; his discourse on the Utilitarian school of philosophy; his extraordinarily apposite quotations from Kant and Nietzsche, as to whom he concludes that no one could have dared to call the latter in support of 'bullying quarrels' unless 'the spirit of the lie had become so powerful in Germany that it had paralyzed everybody.' Here is one writer at all events who from that spirit has declared the freedom of his soul. If we cannot all convey to his compatriots our own support of that brave gesture from the chains of slavery around him, we can at least acknowledge it among ourselves and spread its tidings wheresoever we can carry them.

It would not be unfair to suggest that the two most essential things in this war have been shipping and propaganda. I am not sure which has been the more grossly neglected by this country since the war began; and it remains an open question which will be the final factor in conclusive victory. But it may at least be said The Nineteenth Century and After

that Germany has used her propaganda as a most effective diplomatic submarine, and it remains for our latest Government Department to discover the appropriate counter. I recommend them Dr. Nicolai as an excellent successor to Prince Lichnowsky, to Dr. Mühlon, and to the most significant Disclosures of a German Staff Officer contributed so unconsciously to history by Paul Ehrhardt, the associate of a London firm, who was shot by the Belgians as a spy. For this is clearly a case in which our own Government should immediately consider the advisability of solving any difficulties that may exist in securing, by one means or another, the publication both in England and in the United States of all the important extracts from Dr. Nicolai's work; for he is not likely to remain silent now that he is in a free country, and the first of his volumes, if it secures its due appreciation, may well be the precursor of a most important series of propaganda. In this article I have only illustrated my own observations with a few quotations which may justify my opinion of Dr. Nicolai's value. The argument is very closely reasoned, in the original text; and the complete version should be undertaken by the first professor of philosophic history who may have leisure for the scholarly task of editing and annotating this book as a whole for English-speaking readers.

Judging by the ferocity with which Germany at first proposed to punish two of our captured airmen who were accused of dropping propaganda over our enemies' lines, the effect of such enlightening literature is very much more deeply dreaded by the militarists of Potsdam than our own Government has ever realized. The hint is surely too valuable to be neglected by the alertness of our new officials.

NAUMANN, in an absorbing article, has recently shown how through the war we have acquired a new understanding of our enemies.* How utterly different is our view of the French and English to-day from what it used to be in the long-vanished time of peace!

There is no denying that we have gained in mutual understanding through the grip of this frightful conflict. The question is, what value this perception actually possesses for true knowledge. And to say that, at the very time and under the very circumstances that open our eyes to such horrors, our view of what is going on yonder is but a glimpse through cracks and crannies, to say that the war, which at one moment discloses, conceals at the next, make an observation far less illuminating than that which Naumann has offered.

is to

When it comes to genuine understanding we are worse off as regards the Americans. We did not know them before, and we are not getting to know them now. That is to say, here likewise we have something to learn. And new conditions prelimi

*A translation of this article, entitled 'The Geniuses of the Warring Nations,' was published in the August 24th issue of THE LIVING AGE.

nary to a sound perception and understanding in the future are being brought to light here and now. But they are no more than preliminary conditions. Whoever is concerned with the American spirit will have to be content at present with assimilating the impressions of this people which he was gradually acquiring previous to its entrance into the war. From the fourth of August, 1914, to the second of April, 1917 — the duration of American 'neutrality,' what an extraordinary time of uncertain gropings it was, of apparent blindness, of wretched tension! Almost completely cut off as America. was even then from open intercourse with the Central Powers, given over to the unscrupulous subserviency of a sensational press permeated with our enemies' influence, with experiences of its own but without the guidance of any tradition - how was the American soul to find itself?

Sigmund Schultze has given us a valuable book, full of testimony dating from this time, in the latest volume of his Eiche. The documents come from a source which receives little attention in our daily papers, the clerical. Now, the Americans are a peculiarly religious people. That