age in a recent book by Sven Hedin, the
official chronicler of the German armies:

"Here is a (German) reservist. What a tremendous figure! What can
Latins, Slavs, Celts, Japs, Negroes, Hindus, Ghurkas, Turcos, and
whatever they are called, do against such strapping giants of the
true Germanic type? His features are superbly noble, and he seems
pleased with his day's work. He does not regret that he has offered
his life for Germany's just cause."

In this odious passage we have in a few lines the whole history and
the whole philosophy of the tragedy. We have the spirit with which the
Germans have waged the war, we have the motive for which they have
waged it, and we have the ultimate purpose which they hope to
achieve--namely, to force upon a subjected Europe the rule of the
super-race of Treitschke and the _bionda bestia_ of Nietzsche.

In former times, in the so-called "Dark Age," nations would fight for
the human, rational, but impracticable principle of orthodoxy. To-day
we are fighting for the inhuman, for the equally impracticable and
immoral principle of race antagonism. Germans fight because through
their veins courses the red blood of the Teutons of Tacitus. They are
fighting because they are convinced that they have the Might and the
Right and the Duty of crushing the French and the Russians, because
through French veins courses the tainted blood of the Gauls of Caesar,
and because through the veins of the Slavs courses the white fluid of
the slave and the yellow fluid of the Tatar.

II.

It is one of the commonplaces of the economic school that the economic
motive is the main factor which makes for peace or war, that material
interests only count, and that ideas do not matter. It is one of the
shallow illusions of the pseudo-rationalist school that the age of
religious wars is passed for ever. As a matter of fact, this war is as
much a religious war as any crusade that was ever waged. The only
difference between the religious war of to-day and the religious wars
of yesterday is that in the past dogmas were promulgated by priests
and saints in the name of Theology. The dogmas of to-day are
promulgated in the name of Science by the high-priests of Universities
and Academies. A few mystical Greek words, such as _homousios_ and
_homoiousios_, were the watchwords of the crusades of old. A few
equally mystical Greek words, _brachycephalic_ and _dolichocephalic_,
are the watchwords of the crusades of to-day.