igion of valor is that it dwells too much on submission,
self-sacrifice, and discipline, and not enough on individual liberty and
self-control in liberty. Accordingly, when the valiant men got control
of the Government and carried the nation into a ferocious war, they
swept away with them all the devotees of this romantic and spiritual
State. The modern German is always a controlled, directed, and drilled
person, who aspires to control and discipline his inferiors; and in his
view pretty much all mankind are his inferiors. He is not a freeman in
the French, English, or American sense; and he prefers not to be.

What German Domination Would Mean.

The present war is the inevitable result of lust of empire, autocratic
government, sudden wealth, and the religion of valor. What German
domination would mean to any that should resist it the experience of
Belgium and Northern France during the past three months aptly
demonstrates. The civilized world can now see where the new German
morality--be efficient, be virile, be hard, be bloody, be rulers--would
land it. To maintain that the power which has adopted in practice that
new morality, and in accordance with its precepts promised Austria its
support against Servia and invaded Belgium and France in hot haste, is
not the responsible author of the European war, is to throw away memory,
reason, and common sense in judging the human agencies in current
events.

The real cause of the war is this gradually developed barbaric state of
the German mind and will. All other causes--such as the assassination of
the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, the sympathy of Russia with
the Balkan States, the French desire for the recovery of
Alsace-Lorraine, and Great Britain's jealousy of German
aggrandizement--are secondary and incidental causes, contributory,
indeed, but not primary and fundamental. If any one ask who brought the
ruling class in Germany to this barbaric frame of mind, the answer must
be Bismarck, Moltke, Treitschke, Nietzsche, Bernhardi, the German
Emperor, their like, their disciples, and the military caste.

Germany Never Dreaded Russia.

Many German apologists for the war attribute it to German fear of
Russia. They say that, although Germany committed the first actual
aggression by invading Belgium and Luxemburg on the way to attack France
with the utmost speed and fierceness, the war is really a war of
defense against Russia, which might desirably pass over, af