ree Greek cities with the overwhelming hordes of Asia, at
Marathon and Salamis, as the conflict that saved democracy for Europe
and made possible the civilization of the Occident, so it is probable
that the world will look back upon this colossal War as the same
struggle, multiplied a thousand times in the men and munitions employed,
the struggle determining the future of democracy and civilization for
generations, perhaps for all time.

II

THE CONFLICT OF IDEAS IN THE WAR

The world has been confused as to the issue in this War, because of the
multitude of its causes and of the antagonisms it involves; yet under
all the national and racial hatreds, the economic jealousies, certain
great ideas are being tested out.

Apologists for Germany have told us, even with pride, that in Germany
the supreme conception is the dedication of Man to the State. This was
not true of old Germany. Before the formation of the Prussian empire,
her spirit was intensely individualistic. She stood preeminently for
freedom of thought and action. It was this that gave her noble
spiritual heritage. Goethe is the most individualistic of world masters.
Froebel developed, in the Kindergarten, one of the purest of
democracies. Luther and German protestantism represented the
affirmation of individual conscience as against hierarchical control.
It was this spirit that gave Germany her golden age of literature, her
unmatched group of spiritual philosophers, her religious teachers, her
pre-eminence in music.

Nevertheless, the Prussian state, autocratic from its inception,
received philosophic justification in a series of thinkers, culminating
in Hegel, who regarded the individual as a capricious egotist, the
state, incarnate in its sovereign, as the supreme spiritual entity. He
justified war, regarding it as a permanent necessity, and practically
made might, right, in arguing that a conquering nation is justified by
its more fruitful idea in annexing the weaker, while the conquered, in
being conquered, is judged of God. Here is the philosophic
justification of that Prussian arrogance which in Nietzsche is carried
into glittering rhetoric. Thus the Prussian state from afar back was
opposed to the general spirit of old Germany.

Since 1870, it must be admitted, that spirit is gone. With the
formation of the Prussian empire and for the half century of its
existence, every force of social control--press, church, state,
education, s