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which we insisted on the subordination of the individual to the whole, without considering the rights and the distinctive gifts of the individual. We sacrificed the Rights of Man to the Rights of the State. Our State was Kreon without Antigone. Yet Antigone represents not only the just claims of personality, but also the deeper interests of the State itself. The whole can never count upon the complete devotion of the parts if the whole shows no love and respect for the rights and the idiosyncrasies of the parts.

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In a military way also we perished because the principle of respect for the dignity of man had not been made a part of our military organization. And in particular we came to grief because that which the French nation had newly reconquered for itself in the Dreyfus case viz., the subordination of the military to the moral requirements of civilized society was not allowed to come to the surface in Germany, but on the contrary was obliged to recede before the ever-growing dictation of the sword. With much justification Mr. P. Seippel said in the Journal de Genève: "The triumph of truth and justice in the Dreyfus case was the overture to the victory of the Marne; the triumph of the military in the Zabern case was the overture to the German breakdown.'

The French make a distinction between esprit de finesse and esprit de géometrie. In this life both are as necessary as man and wife, and where they disagree individuals and societies also disagree. Organization without respect for the droits de l'homme fails to carry through any difficult task that requires the assembling and cohesion of forces. Culture of the individual without high discipline and precision of coöperation brings on a disorder in which at last the dignity of man is itself destroyed. So that, with reference to the requirements

of true organization, it may be seen how intimately each of these nations is dependent upon the other for its completion, and how without such complementation neither can, in fact, solve its own problems.

The same may be said in favor of cultural coöperation between the Slavonic and the Germanic spirit. The Slav can undoubtedly learn great things from the disciplined force and the methodical spirit of the Germans, and tremendous tasks of organization await us in the East. But we shall be competent to undertake these tasks only when we have allowed not only the West, but the East as well, to help us in the spiritual deepening of our powers of organization. The Slav is particularly sensitive in his antipathy to the hard and mechanical forces of order; in fact, Slavophiles accuse the State of being death to the brotherhood of man. We may be assured, at any rate, that we can again learn from the Slav what the Greeks brought home to the practical men of Rome, namely, the spirit of intimate, unselfish humanity. Only by humanizing our own principles of orderliness can we help the Slav toward an orderly life.

During the war an English colleague said to me: 'You Germans do not know how much we have lost because you have imitated us. We were dependent altogether upon your spirituality. We are a practical people; but we feel nevertheless that without a spiritual foundation we shall be shipwrecked even in practical matters.' Many thoughtful Englishmen perceive this; and, on the other hand, impartial Germans will not deny that we have many and extraordinary lessons to learn from the hereditary political wisdom and other endowments of the English. We are a strongly subjective people, a musical and lyrical folk, and we are in constant danger of succumb

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ing to our own emotions. This disposition is indeed an asset, but in the sphere of practical politics it is the real cause of our incapacity. It prevents us from thinking dramatically, like the English, - that is, from being able to see and to acknowledge the reality of the otherthan-I. In spite, therefore, of all our talk of 'Realpolitik,' we have remained altogether incapable of assessing the surrounding world objectively, or of emerging from our own drunken egoism; and this especially because, in addition, a fundamentally false political philosophy has taught us to look upon egoism as the only true world policy; which in turn has made a laughing stock of our best and choicest German contributions.

Our ancient German love for that which is foreign was a political asset. It supplied us with a counterbalance against subjectivity. But since these traditions have been lost sight of, we have completely lost the genuine political faculty for building a bridge from our own to foreign conceptions of life. The Englishman too has a hard and tough ego, but he has also a lively sense that there are others, and that they must be reckoned with. Possibly a genuine study of his political ways and methods may cure us of our hallucinations of 'Realpolitik.'

The process of which I have indicated a few samples is not one of mere imitation. We have imitated altogether too much; we have adopted everything that fitted in with our own bad requirements, and have also adopted altogether too rigidly the political forms of other western peoples. What in reality is important is the love for that which is different, the joy in the abundance of types, the appreciation of that which is contrary to our own mode of life, the consciousness of our own limitations and one-sidedness, instead of the conceited assumption that we are fun

damentally superior to all others because in the matter of conquering external things we have made such great strides.

The League of Nations which should adjust the disintegrating conflicts of interest among the nations by means of higher methods will thereby create an atmosphere in which this spiritualmoral exchange among the nations immeasurably superior to the exchange of commodities - may again come to life, with a new and profounder meaning.

What obstacles now stand in the path of the consummation of such a league of culture among the nations? At this moment, while we are discussing the question of forming a league, it seems as if this new hope of the world were a mere Fata Morgana, ever receding as we approach; a dream for which the world is not prepared. Many people among those nations whose spokesmen had made the League of Nations the central structure in their scheme of world regeneration after the war, have abandoned the project altogether. The existing fragment of the League of Nations has the unfortunate appearance of being merely the executive organ of the ruling minority. Throughout the world the leading forces are falling back hopelessly and aimlessly into the old methods of individualistic security.

Our nationalists point to this tendency, and claim that what they predicted has come to pass; that the whole scheme of western pacifism has proved itself nothing more than a sham; that Germany, in order to find its bearings, must take notice of this bankruptcy of western ideas and act accordingly; and that the world belongs, as heretofore, to the old order.

To this we may reply as follows: It is no doubt true that western pacifism has not displayed a genius equal to the world problem; that it lacked the moral

greatness and strength, independently of the spiritual condition of Germany, to cling with genuine courage and unflinching steadfastness to the ideal, and thus to bring about the new methods and the new order. However, the conclusion which we Germans should draw from the situation is not that we should be content with this general backsliding, or perhaps take the lead in it; on the contrary, we must now by example and precept once more become in the centre of Europe what we once were the temporal foundation of the European system of peace. We have passed through the false method experimentally. We were crushed because of our delusion that the Central Powers of Europe could best oppose the force of the world by raising to their highest potentiality the means for applying force, and by reliance upon their own power. We overlooked the fact that he who sits in the centre must ask for justice, not for power. If he provokes the competition of might he will be encircled; the dynamic laws of his situation will bring this about as an unavoidable doom. Because we overlooked this, laughed at justice and exalted might as the only law of the world, we ourselves willed the present condition of the world from which we now suffer. We called upon the earthgod. He came and subjected us to his laws.

We cannot now do otherwise than adopt the opposite course. Even though all the rest of the world should fall back into imperialism, we cannot do better than to make ourselves, even to our dying breath, a spiritual and moral counterbalance to all these tendencies. By any other method we are certain to fall short. In a game of hazard with force we must inevitably lose, for we are situated at the most vulnerable spot in Europe. Besides, our entire economic restoration now depends upon

European concord, upon our regaining the confidence of the world, upon the strengthening of the moral forces throughout the nations. We can secure these preliminaries to our restoration only if we turn back on the course we have pursued and become the prime movers among the genuine up-builders. We must draw out the consequences of the ideas which others have proclaimed, but which they have feared to apply because of their want of confidence in us. It is for us to develop and bring to fruition the idealistic foundations of a world confederation.

Those who point to the breakdown of western pacifism forget, however, that this pacifism has always proceeded on the assumption that Germany would take part honestly and as a result of inner regeneration; for only so could a guarantee be given to the civilized world which would render unnecessary a policy of self-defense on the part of each single nation. But as Germany in this matter constantly disappointed the world by withholding its support, it was to blame for keeping the world moving in its ancient course, instead of becoming what Germany used to be, the keystone of European tranquillity and federation. If, on the other hand, it is pointed out that none of the other nations opposed to Germany had allowed the Hague idea to prevent them from going to war (the Boer War, the RussoJapanese War), it must be remembered that the Hague idea was an attempt to synchronize the drift toward the new order, and that if this simultaneity could have been secured it would have been possible for the nations to risk surrendering their individual defenses and to rely upon the moral force of a world league for the justice necessary to secure their rights.

It must not be forgotten how at that time (1907) the American ambassador, White, the English premier, Campbell

Bannerman, and the Italian delegate, Count Nigra, fairly implored Germany to withdraw her opposition. It was felt that the realization of the project would stand or fall with Germany's attitude. All their efforts failed. Not only our attitude toward the essential propositions of the Hague Conference, but still more our moral isolation from the ardent desire of the entire civilized world of that time, made impossible the attempt to substitute an orderly peace by understanding for the competition of force. No wonder, then, that the old methods continued to function.

The same is true of 1917-20. If at the zenith of our power we had accepted the proposals of Woodrow Wilson, the world would have believed in our honest change of heart, and a united and simultaneous progress of the entire civilized world might have been possible. It was our fate, and it determined the fate of the course of Wilson's ideals, that we submitted to his proposals only after we were crushed to earth, defeated, and after we had by our methods of warfare excited to the highest pitch the animosity and hatred of all the people opposed to us. This phase of the situation must not be overlooked when the reasons for the miscarriage of the western pacific ideals after the war are to be judged.

The world was waiting for Germany, and it is waiting for Germany to-day. Not for a protesting, hating, revengebreeding Germany, but for a Germany that has returned to its own better self; a Germany which by the spirit in which it looks after its own interests, in which it determines its conflicts with foreign interests, its attitude toward the accusations and demands of its former enemies, will make an effort to use genuine world-politics in place of mere egopolitics. The spiritual attitude of the centre, not that of the periphery, decides the fate of the world. Whoever

recognizes this geographic foundation, so to speak, for the responsibility of Germany will form a grave opinion of Germany's own guilt; but he will also recognize altogether new potentialities for the German nation - how it may serve the world and thereby atone for its misdeeds. And he will not understand those who wish, in the interests of Germany, that the Entente had had power to build up a new world order without the regeneration and help of Germany, so that Germany at the end might be invited in, like a child to a Christmas feast.

No doubt, if the masses of people who foamed with rage after Germany's collapse, and in spite of all they saw in Belgium and Northern France, had possessed the superhuman capacity to present Germany with a Wilsonian peace, they would have become the absolute moral leaders of Europe, and we should have been obliged to enter their world structure as thankful pupils. Perhaps it was good for us that things were not made so easy; that, in fact, it seems more and more as if the gigantic problem will not be solved unless the ancient German soul again comes to life and begins to speak, and out of the fullness of its bitter experience and its deeply conscious conversion finds the way to conjure up the moral forces which alone can overcome the present spirit of disintegration.

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these heated forces of selfishness and greedy might a league of steam-boilers. Truly, in this world of unscrupulous competition and collectively increasing passions a mere political association would be up in the air if the spiritual condition of the nations were to remain the same,

a condition which Meister Eckhard designated as 'being moonstruck on your own greatness'; if, for instance, France were to talk of nothing but its restoration, Germany only of its need and suffering, England to have its eyes set on its own world-empire each single nation merely calling upon the League of Nations as upon a physician to cure its ills and as an executor of its demands.

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Only the root-forces of morality, of devotion, of love, can overcome the curse of our civilization. We need a living force, coming out of the deeps of the nations themselves, which shall stretch far out beyond mere national boundaries, and make justice to others, the needs of strangers, foreign difficulties and foreign possibilities of life, its own. We need, to speak with Bertrand Russell, instead of the possessive mood, which looks only after its own safety by any means possible, the creative mood, by which we devote ourselves farsightedly to the general well-being; only by such methods may each people confidently expect reliable guarantees for its own existence.

Right here lie the great possibilities of Germany's new position in the world. All other European nations have centuries of national exclusiveness behind them. The German people have a tradition, several centuries old, as the bearers of European unity. The old German Empire was itself an association of nations, and was organized with reference to popular rule rather than to the rule of the State; and it thus became the starting-point for the teaching of popular rights. Because of its capabil

ity and its history the German soul became the mediating soul of Europe, incessantly absorbing cultural elements from all sides in order to transmute them into something of value for all mankind. The German developed a special love for that which is foreign, without which love no genuine international coöperation is possible. Therefore the realization of a league of nations depends altogether upon thiswhether the old Germanic spirit may again awaken or not. This hope is not German arrogance. It is not a claim of superiority. It is because of our location and of our historic development that we are destined to play the part of mediators; and without this contribution of ours even the most brilliant gifts of other nations cannot prevent the disruption of the nations of the earth.

As a matter of course, the German cannot begin his nation-uniting mission by merely offering himself to the world as mediator, as if nothing had happened. Too many German adherents and workers for the world league fail to appreciate the full depth of the abyss which still separates us from the rest of the world, in spite of the superficial resumption of coöperation. The German people still believe that this gap will gradually heal of itself through economic necessity. They will be sadly disappointed. We are hardly conscious of the fixity of purpose to apply the boycott which exists among the majority of the people of our former enemies. Ineradicably, and justly, there exists in the allied nations a firm belief that it was the ruling classes of Germany that made the world-holocaust inevitable, by their glorification of war, by their derision and sabotage of all efforts for the peace and understanding of nations, and by their repeated anarchistic and anti-European manipulation of conflicts in which other nations were vitally

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