ed that it itself must be the controller of that
democratic principle. Another frequently expressed view of the
purposes of England and America is that they have purely sordid
interests, that they are capable of fighting only for advantage and
material gain.

Many of these German views of the war imply a principle that runs
through many fields of German thought--that values are something to be
determined objectively. It is a scientific principle. Its conclusions
rest upon proof, rather than upon subjective principles of valuation.
There is another argument which is in part based upon an
interpretation of scientific principles, but is in part also a
fatalistic doctrine--confidence in the issues of battle as a means of
testing the right and the validity of culture. The right will prevail,
on this theory, because the right is the stronger or because in some
sense strength _is_ the right, and because the method of selection of
the best by struggle is a basic principle, and may be applied to
everything that is living or is a product of life.

If the German interpretation of the German cause has been dominated by
an ideal of objective proof, we hear on the other side much about
subjective rights and subjective evaluations--the right, for example,
of every people to determine its own life, to have its own culture, to
decide upon its own nationality. The Allies have believed that they
were fighting to establish this principle throughout the world, and
that this principle is diametrically opposed to the German principle.
The thought of centralization, of a hierarchy of nations and the like,
is wholly foreign to this democratic principle. Bergson (17) finds in
the idea of industry the cause of the war and the principle of
opposition in it. The Allies, he says, have been fighting against
materialism with the forces of the spirit. Germany's forces are
material. A mechanism is fighting against a self-renewing spirit. The
ideal of force is met by the force of the ideal.

Boutroux (13) says that France, in the war, has had before her eyes
the idea of humanity; France was fighting for the recognition of the
rights of personality--rights of each nation to its own existence.
France is a champion of freedom; she wants all the legitimate
aspirations of peoples to be realized. Germanism, with its ideal of
force, is contrasted with the ideal of Greek and Christian culture and
philosophy. A cult of justice and modesty is contrasted with th