ra of divinity, and it is commonly a
bootless question where the dynastic powers end and the claims of
divinity begin. There is something of a coalescence.[7]

[Footnote 7: "To us the state is the most indispensable as well as the
highest requisite to our earthly existence.... All individualistic
endeavor ... must be unreservedly subordinated to this lofty claim....
The state ... eventually is of infinitely more value than the sum of all
the individuals within its jurisdiction." "This conception of the state,
which is as much a part of our life as is the blood in our veins, is
nowhere to be found in the English Constitution, and is quite foreign to
English thought, and to that of America as well."--Eduard Meyer,
_England, its Political Organisation and Development and the War against
Germany_, translated by H.S. White. Boston 1916. pp. 30-31.]

The Kaiser holds dominion by divine grace and is accountable to none but
God, if to Him. The whole case is in a still better state of repair as
touches the Japanese establishment, where the Emperor is a lineal
descendant of the supreme deity, Amaterazu (_o mi Kami_), and where, by
consequence, there is no line of cleavage between a divine and a secular
mastery. Pursuant to this more unqualified authenticity of autocratic
rule, there is also to be found in this case a correspondingly
unqualified devotion in the subjects and an unqualified subservience to
dynastic ends on the part of the officers of the crown. The coalescence
of dynastic rule with the divine order is less complete in the German
case, but all observers bear witness that it all goes far enough also in
the German case. This state of things is recalled here as a means of
making plain that the statesmen of these Imperial Powers must in the
nature of the case, and without blame, be drawn out from under the
customary restraint of those principles of vulgar morality that are
embodied in the decalogue. It is not that the subject, or--what comes to
the same thing--the servant of such a dynastic State may not be upright,
veracious and humane in private life, but only that he must not be
addicted to that sort of thing in such manner or degree as might hinder
his usefulness for dynastic purposes. These matters of selfishly
individual integrity and humanity have no weight as against the
exigencies of the dynastic enterprise.

These considerations may not satisfy all doubters as to the moral
sufficiency of these motives that so