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Its life is force, and it must continually increase its force. This force is the army. With this army it must realize itself.

This conception of the state as force and the army as the expression of the essence of the state has resulted in a peculiarly military organization. "Other states possess armies," said the French military attaché in 1870, “in Prussia the army possesses the state." The state itself is therefore organized like an army. It has a leader whose orders must be implicitly obeyed and against whose decisions there is no appeal. Effective use of force in strengthening and extending the state is its justification and not considerations of law or humanity. "For me," the Emperor is reported to have said, "humanity ends with the Vosges." Every member of the state must, therefore, be disciplined and efficient. As a soldier he swears allegiance, not to the constitution, but to the Kaiser, his war lord."

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This Prussian state is therefore supreme in Prussia and the world. There is room for nothing above it. There can be no league of nations such as that proposed by our President, by

which it can be fettered or bound.

And in

this state organized about an army, the army itself is supreme. It is not responsible to any civil power. That, again, is what we mean by militarism.

That this is incompatible with the American ideal will be plain to all. President Wilson in his speech at West Point on June 13, 1916, brought out the contrast strikingly:

"The spirit of militarism is the opposite of the civilian spirit, the citizen spirit. In a country where militarism prevails the military man looks down upon the civilian, regards him as intended for his, the military man's, support

. and just as long as America is America, that spirit and point of view is impossible with us.'

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In the last half of the century, as we have seen, the conviction had increased among the Prussians that the greatest state is Prussia, and the greatest civilization the Prussian. It is the mission of the Prussian state to establish its dominance and to spread Kultur. Those who refused to recognize its supremacy or accept its Kultur were attempting to interfere

with the course of history and deserved no consideration. Prussia was far more than "a geographical expression." It was an implied state of war against the rest of the world. This Prussian ideal it had created and had imposed upon Germany. It took but little persuasion to convince Saxons and South Germans of their superiority, even a superiority which they shared with the Prussians, and they soon accepted the notion; grotesque and fantastic as it seems, it is nevertheless the motive force in recent history. It is the delusion not of a few dreamers, but of millions of the subjects of the Kaiser. This superiority must make itself felt. Not until Deutschland shall in esse and in posse have erected herself über Alles will Deutschtum be realized. It is for this reason that Prussia's leaders quite sincerely have been able to speak of the intolerable pressure on her boundaries. There was pressure, but it was not pressure from without. Were Holland or Belgium or France or Switzerland, or even Russia, practising or pondering aggression? Not in the least. The pressure was very real, but it was pressure from within.

When we couple willingness to accept authority, the medieval and voluntary subservience of which we spoke, with such an ideal and programme we can begin to understand what happened in 1914. For we must not imagine that the Prussian "loves evil for its own bitter sake." To him Prussia and the war that makes for her glory are the highest good on earth. This fanaticism, this mysticism, we are fighting. This is the true root and cause of the great conflict.

This also will explain why they were our potential enemies in 1914. How they became our declared and open enemies will be plain as we trace the earlier stages of the World War, each phase of which will merely bring to the surface one more implication of this theory and programme.

CHAPTER II

THE CAUSE OF THE WORLD WAR

HE ideas which prevailed in Germany on

TH

the civilizing mission of that country, on the purpose of states and the function of the army, implied the necessity of war. This necessity was regarded by her leaders not as something dire to be forfended and deferred, but as a consummation which, though it might involve hardships and sacrifice, was none the less devoutly to be wished. War was as natural and desirable for the state as healthy exercise for the individual. It kept the body politic in strength and vigor. According to Hegel, wars are as salutary to the nations as the ocean winds that sweep and stir the waves are to the restless seas.* They prevent stagnation. This idea was repeated by great teachers like Clausevitz and Treitschke, and recently it had been

* Cf. J. B. Scott, "A Survey of International Relations Between the United States and Germany, 1914-1917." Pp. xxxv-cxiv contain excellent digests of the more important German theories of the state and its mission.

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