acterization of German life reveals something very much like
a paradox in the principles of the war. We see a conflict in one
direction between a certain mediaevalism in government and social forms
and a more modern and progressive type; we see also a conflict of a
modernism of an extreme form, represented by a scientific
civilization, united with this mediaevalism, and in opposition to a
conception of life which is in some respects more naive and more
primitive. The explanation of this paradox is that Germany offers an
illustration of a phenomenon of development that has been seen before
in history, of an excess of development and specialization in a
direction that appears to be off the main line of progress, or at
least is an anachronism. Germany has shown us the effects of
rationalism, some would say a morbid and hypertrophied reason. This
rationalism is certainly in part a product of systematic education and
propaganda, a conscious exploitation of science, and it is in part
temperamental. Such a result is always possible in a small state with
a highly centralized form of government. It is a notorious fact that
Germany's type of civilization can be spread neither by persuasion nor
by force. If we may apply a biological analogy we may say that German
Kultur in its modern form cannot survive. That this German
civilization has been felt by the world at large to be abnormal and of
the nature of a monstrosity we can hardly doubt, and that therefore to
some extent there has been a sense, on the part of the enemies of
Germany, of fighting to root out a dangerous and rank growth. Germany,
seeing in her own civilization only the appearance of modernism, has
been inclined to regard all other civilizations as decadent.

Germany, governed by the ideals of rationalism, has assumed that
history can be made, wars conducted, life regulated in accordance with
a program. On the other side we see a very general acceptance of a
philosophy of life in which many evils of disorder and waste and the
necessity of an experimental attitude toward life are accepted as
necessary consequences of the life of freedom. We see implied in this
philosophy of life a belief in a morality and a religion that are
based upon feeling rather than upon objective evidences, and a way of
judging conduct more or less naively and simply or according to
methods of appreciation that are essentially aesthetic, using the term
in a wide sense. This mode of life is acce