the first place, it may be said, we are tired of their
names; in the second place, Germans deny that they have had anything
like the influence we attribute to them. There is a certain validity
in the first of these objections. The constant recurrence of these
three names is certainly a little tedious. They are like a
three-headed Charles I--or a triplicate Geibel. I would gladly have
omitted them had it been by any means possible. But one might as well
compile an Old Testament anthology and omit Isaiah, Jeremiah, and
Ezekiel. For, whatever the Germans may say, they are the major
prophets of the new-German spirit. Treitschke is the prophet of
tribalism, Nietzsche of ruthlessness, Bernhardi of ambition. It is
absurd to say that they are not influential. Treitschke may have
fallen somewhat out of fashion in the years immediately preceding the
war, but his spirit had permeated the political thought of a whole
generation. To the living influence of Nietzsche there is a host of
witnesses. Gerhart Hauptmann, near the beginning of the war, averred
that the cultured German soldier carried "Zarathustra," along with
"Faust" and the Bible, in his knapsack. Nor was this an idle guess.
Professor Deissmann, of Berlin, tells us that he enquired into the
matter, and learned from book-sellers that the books most in demand
among soldiers were the New Testament, "Faust" and "Zarathustra."
O.A.H. Schmitz, in "Das wirkliche Deutschland," says of the German
youth born in the 'seventies and early 'eighties that Nietzsche was
"the lighthouse toward which their enthusiasm was directed." Prof.
Wilhelm Bousset, of Goettingen, writes: "There is among us much unripe,
unclear Nietzsche enthusiasm: many a German ass has thrown the lion's
skin of the great man round his shoulders, and thinks he has thereby
become a philosopher and prophet." Such testimonies could be
multiplied indefinitely. There is no question that Nietzsche has been
by far the greatest single force among the spiritual shapers of
new-Germany. It may be true that he did not intend his "immoralism" to
be read literally as a guide to conduct--it may be true that, in some
of his most characteristic passages, he knew himself to be talking
reckless and dangerous nonsense (that was his way of "living
dangerously")--but can we reasonably suppose that soldiers in a
"conquered" country, soldiers full of the belief that any opposition
to Germanism was in itself a crime (see No. 344), paused to lo