nd for anything, they insist
with obstinate perseverance on fitting realities into the system.
Durkheim (16) says that the Germans' organized system of ideas is a
cause of war. It is also true, we should say, that the tendency to
organize ideas and even the fundamental ideas by which the Germans
have been guided are deeply rooted in temperament, in history and in
the social order of the past. Boutroux (13) says that the Germans
themselves regard the war as the culmination of their philosophy. We
should say on the contrary that the whole war philosophy of Europe is
almost wholly a product of strife and comes from impulses that arise
irresistibly in the practical life. Into these movements philosophy
fits or may be made to fit, and the presence of ideas in a society in
which the academic life has great prestige, ideas which coincide with
beliefs readily gives an illusion of an order governed by the higher
reason. The fact that Germany's recent wars had all been highly
successful, the fact that Germany had learned to depend upon her good
sword in time of need are the chief sources of Germany's doctrines of
war: the Hegelian background in the light of what we have learned in
recent times about the psychology of nations, must seem to be rather
of the nature of the ornamental. The ideal of the Prussian State to be
a power directed by intelligence suggests Hegel, but it seems highly
improbable, to say the least, that Hegelian philosophy has had much to
do with shaping this ideal. Behind all this is the necessity of
shaping German life in the form which it has taken--necessity if we
accept, at least, Germany's national temperament itself as a
necessity. That other belief, widely held by German intellectuals and
officers that war is the testing of the validity of national cultures
would also probably never have appeared on the scene had not Germany
been secure in the belief that she herself had both the right and the
might on her side. It is possible, of course, that the war has
distorted our vision so that the relations of the practical life and
the life of reason have all been thrown out of focus, but when we see
what forces have been at work, and what they have done, it is
difficult to escape the conviction that we have been inclined to
believe too much in the power of mere ideas. This may be the great
lesson of the war. We may learn from it how to make ideas become the
power that hitherto they have failed to be.

CHAP