life of a different kind, to live side by side in one and the same State,
without succumbing to the temptation of each trying to force his own
nationality on the other, things on earth would look a good deal more
peaceful. But it is a law of life and development in history that where
two national civilisations meet they fight for ascendancy. In the struggle
between nationalities one nation is the hammer and the other the anvil; one
is the victor and the other the vanquished."[1] No words could indicate
more clearly the cause that is at stake in the present war. They show us
that there are still governments in Europe so ignorant as to believe that
the different nationalities of mankind are necessarily hostile to one
another, and so foolish and brutal as to think that national civilisation,
or, as the German Professors call it, "culture," can and indeed must be
propagated by the sword. It is this extraordinary conception which is at
the back of protests like that of Professor Haeckel and Professor Eucken
(men whom, in the field of their own studies, all Europe is proud to
honour) against "England fighting with a half-Asiatic power against
Germanism."[2]

[Footnote 1: _Imperial Germany_, by Prince Bernhard von Buelow, English
translation, 1st ed. pp. 245-6 (London, 1914).]

[Footnote 2: Protest of Professors Ernst Haeckel and Rudolf Eucken of Jena,
quoted in _The Times_ from the _Vossische Zeitung_ of August 20, 1914.]

There are not only half-Asiatics, there are real Asiatics side by side with
England; and England is not ashamed of it. For she does not reckon the
culture of Europe as higher than the culture of Asia, or regard herself as
the hammer upon the anvil of India.

Prince Buelow's words, and the theory of policy underlying them, really go
to the root of the whole trouble in European politics. They explain
the Balance of Power, the competition in armaments, the belief in the
inevitability and the moral value of war, and all those common European
shibboleths which seem so inexplicable to citizens of the more
modern-minded States and communities of the world. Why should Germany and
Austria arm against France and Russia when Canada does not arm against
the United States? Why should a Balance of Power be necessary to the
maintenance of European Peace when we do not consider the preponderance
of a single Power, such as the United States in North, Central and South
America, or Great Britain in the Pacific or Southe