evolution will break out the minute war is declared? . . .
Have you not noticed the agitation of the boulevard on account of the
Caillaux trial? Reactionaries and revolutionists have been assaulting
each other for the past three days. I have seen them challenging one
another with shouts and songs as if they were going to come to blows
right in the middle of the street. This division of opinion will become
accentuated when our troops cross the frontier. It will then be civil
war. The anti-militarists are clamoring mournfully, believing that it
is in the power of the government to prevent the clash. . . . A country
degenerated by democracy and by the inferiority of the triumphant Celt,
greedy for full liberty! . . . We are the only free people on earth
because we know how to obey."

This paradox made Julio smile. Germany the only free people! . . .

"It is so," persisted Hartrott energetically. "We have the liberty best
suited to a great people--economical and intellectual liberty."

"And political liberty?"

The professor received this question with a scornful shrug.

"Political liberty! . . . Only decadent and ungovernable people,
inferior races anxious for equality and democratic confusion, talk about
political liberty. We Germans do not need it. We are a nation of masters
who recognize the sacredness of government, and we wish to be commanded
by those of superior birth. We possess the genius of organization."

That, according to the Doctor, was the grand German secret, and the
Teutonic race upon taking possession of the world, would share its
discovery with all. The nations would then be so organized that each
individual would give the maximum of service to society. Humanity,
banded in regiments for every class of production, obeying a superior
officer, like machines contributing the greatest possible output of
labor--there you have the perfect state! Liberty was a purely negative
idea if not accompanied with a positive concept which would make it
useful.

The two friends listened with astonishment to this description of the
future which Teutonic superiority was offering to the world. Every
individual submitted to intensive production, the same as a bit of land
from which its owner wishes to get the greatest number of vegetables.
. . . Mankind reduced to mechanics. . . . No useless operations that would
not produce immediate results. . . . And the people who heralded this
awful idea were the very philosophers a