21 405 THE SUPER-STATE AND THE 'ETERNAL VALUES' BEING THE HERBERT SPENCER LECTURE DELIVERED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD ON WEDNESDAY, MARCH 15, 1916 BY J. MARKT BALDWIN, HON. LL.D., HON. D.Sc. CORRESPONDENT OF THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON EDINBURGH GLASGOW NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE BOMBAY HUMPHREY MILFORD 1916 PRINTED IN ENGLAND AT THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS THE SUPER-STATE AND THE 'ETERNAL VALUES' SYNOPSIS. 1. Distinctions in Value : ' Instrumental and Absolute ', ' Individual and Over-individual '. 2. The German Value-theory of the State. 3. Auxiliary factors to the Theory : Natural Selection, Religion (divine right and divine mission), The Nietzschian Ethics. 4. The Super-State : Maxims of super-state morality. 5. The Crisis in Internationalism: Socialism, Citizenship, Arbi- tration, Culture. 6. The Democratic Theory of the State : the Conflict of Values. Conclusion. I 1 Among the many voices raised to explain and interpret the war and the issues it involves, there are those which come from a group of philosophical thinkers, repre- senting the theory of Value. This theory is a modern and fruitful branch of inquiry ; it is interesting to note that certain of its distinctions and even certain of its terms have been brought into popular use by their application in the discussions of the war. It is not my purpose to speak at length of the theory of value, but only to point out one or two of the dis- tinctions which have sunk deep into the consciousness of the Germanic nations and which supply the philo- sophy, practical no less than theoretical, upon which 1 The speaker's introductory remarks in recognition of the great- ness of Herbert Spencer, and in appreciation of the appointment as * Herbert Spencer Lecturer ', are not here reproduced. 3423G3 .SWER-STATE AND their campaign fundamentally rests. This philosophy presents a new justification of old beliefs and old practices, but seems by its apparent novelty and thoroughness to supersede the older discussions in the minds of the Germans, and thus to justify them and refute their enemies. Two distinctions are fundamental in the writings of these apologists for Germany: that between 'instru- mental and absolute values' the latter called more popularly 'eternal values' (ewige Werthe)ar\d that between 'individual and over-individual values'. The terms, being self-explanatory as soon as one enters into the domain which the word value denotes, are well chosen. r A value is that which is in some way valuable, that is to say, capable of exciting desire, giving satisfac- tion, gratifying or stimulating interest, appealing to human nature on the side of appetite and emotion, not merely on the side of knowledge or fact. Values are contrasted with truths, facts, neutral events. These latter have very different values or none at all to different individuals or to the same individual under different circumstances. One may ask of any thing, any event, any institution, what is its value ? what is it worth ? has it any significance for life and culture over and above its mere existence as a fact or event ? Answers to this question vary according to the way a thing meets the demand made upon it, and also according to the nature of the demand itself. It may be a thing which has no value for its own sake, a hammer, say, or a nail, but only as being an instrument of action, a tool, a means of securing something else in which a real value resides. Such a tool, or means to a further end, is said to have ' instrumental J value. A good illus- THE 'ETERNAL VALUES' 5 tration is the paper bank-note which has the value of so much coin in the purchase of other values or ' goods '. These instrumental values are contrasted with others which are pursued for their own sake, or are worthy of being so pursued, such as moral satisfaction, artistic creation, scientific discovery. To the person who pursues them, these have independent or ' absolute ' value. They are not merely of use, as means to securing something else, but they are pursued as ends, through the instrumentality of other things used as means. Again, further, there is the distinction between ' indi- vidual and over-individual ' values. Over-individual values are those which are not defined, exhausted, or even comprehended from the point of view of individual desire, interest, or gratification ; while individual values are those which appeal to individuals and gratify them only. Things having over- individual value may appeal to individuals, certainly, but their worth does not terminate with individuals. Their worth or value resides in the fact that they survive individual use, holding, increasing, transmitting, and transmuting the values which individuals find in them : they remain above, beyond, 'over* the individual. The home, the family, the race, suggest themselves. This great University has for the nation and for the world, as well as for each of its students, a value which is ' over- individual ' and in so far ' eternal '. For while its cultural content forms and satisfies individuals, it grows and expands withal, from generation to generation. So social institutions generally, the school, the club, the church, have over-individual value. These are distinctions, thus briefly stated, to which all may freely subscribe. The old distinction, familiar in philosophy between 'means and end', is embodied in 6 THE SUPER-STATE AND that between ' instrumental and absolute values ' : the means is instrumental to the end, the end is the value pursued. So in the contrast between individual and over-individual values, we recognize another familiar distinction : over-individual here means, properly speak- ing, not impersonal but collective and social. Institutions such as this University, which do not serve the individual alone, but generations of individuals, have a social, national, and racial value which is over-individual. Confining our attention for the moment to these over- individual values, the next topic of interest concerns the objects, institutions or organizations in which such values reside. What, we may ask, is the vehicle of over-individual values ? the agency by which they are conserved, handed down, and increased ? The reply to this question brings us at once into the domain of the burning topics of the present war. The reply is that there are two fundamental vehicles of over- individual values, as far as they are social : the Race to which a man belongs and the State to which he owes allegiance. By the race, I mean the stock, the blood, the human variety, marked off by traits of heredity and christened historically with a name Teuton, Anglo- Saxon, Latin, Slav. These racial distinctions show themselves in individuals, and represent what is dis- tinctive in their heredity and worthful for good or ill in their temperament. By the laws of physical heredity, the race remains the depository of the mass of characters which serve as basis for the classification of peoples. The Hebrew race, for example, has preserved and passed on the qualities of the Jews, through all the vicissitudes of fire and flood, morally speaking, to which this people has been subjected. The over-individual traits of the Semites, considered from the racial point THE 'ETERNAL VALUES ' 7 of view, are values which have been preserved by heredity. This is their vehicle. The other vehicle, social properly speaking, over against the physical heritage, is the State. The State consolidates, conserves, defends, extends, transmits, in short serves as the permanent locus of all the social interests, of the entire civilization understood in the broad sense of the German word 'Kultur' of the Nation. This, too, we may set down as being a safe and true generalization ; and the war now comes in sight : for it is the significance of those two things, Race and State, especially the latter, and the place they occupy in the German theory, to which I wish to direct your attention. In the different positions and values assigned to them, the opposition between the two sides shows itself in its full force. The Value theory, sustained by the apologists for Germany in the present crisis, although developed in its essentials before the war, may first have our attention. II i. The State, say German idealistic thinkers since Fichte, is not merely the vehicle of the values which are over-individual, the means by which they are conserved for society and handed down to future generations ; in that case the State would be a mere tool or instrument, serving the cultural values which it embodies. Not so such a view would destroy the power, prestige, and ultimate sanction of the State. The State, more- over, is not a device for governing, or for reaching any other national end : it is the Nation itself. The State is the full national will, the expression of the nation in executive, judicial, and military terms. The true and final over-individual value, even if we consider this to 8 THE SUPER-STATE AND reside in a higher humanity, an enlarged social organiza- tion, a richer civilization, open to all individuals in all generations this value is to be found in, and only in, the State. The State not only has value, instrumental and individual ; it is value per se, intrinsic, over-individual, and absolute. With that other great historical essence, the Race, we must place the State, as being the first t eternal value '. 2. The fact of Race (Volk) enters essentially also into the German political theory. The national ' Kultur ' is, in its broad outlines, a racial product. It embodies the energies, the distinctive gifts, the peculiar active and emotional characters of the racial temperament. Latin civilization is a product of the Latin temper, as German is of the Teutonic. The form of a national culture is determined by the hereditary gifts or endowment of a race. But this entire culture, one then proceeds to say, this racial social product, is just what the State also is, as we saw above : the State is the whole national life and will expressing itself in positive and authoritative form. The conclusion then follows that the State summarizes both the great systems of over-individual value, the social and the racial. In its function, we have the union of the physical with the social heritage of the Nation. A given nation or people may fight for its existence, accordingly, from two points of view ; that of the State or that of the Race; and in both these efforts it seeks to maintain a system, and the same system, of over-individual values. As a political unit the Teutonic State is German; as a racial force it is pan-German : but it is always one and the same State. 3. This being the case, the State does not derive its powers or receive its prerogatives from the individual THE 'ETERNAL VALUES 1 9 citizens ; for they do not and cannot represent the over- individual system of values. This system is a develop- ment, a national growth, a historical product, which appears in the national life as a whole, not in any collection of individual persons. No popular election or consensus of views can ever determine or express the national will; that will is resident solely in the State, that is in the Dynasty and the Monarch, who embody the over-individual and eternal values. The Monarch, considered as a royal presence, is not an individual, a mere person, but a symbol of an eternal value. Through him the Nation speaks by royal decree, which is final and irrevocable, since there is no court of appeal whose decision could have higher value. Only as the monarch is supported and obeyed throughout all the channels of the national life is the ideal realized of a perfect State ; only then does the national will come to its true and full expression. Here is the philosophical justification of the Prussianized German Imperial State. It is a corollary to this that all reforms and measures of social betterment must proceed from above, from the State, not from below, from the social-democracy. 1 The social reforms accomplished in Germany have not been concessions to democracy, but voluntary gifts from the State; not rights exacted from the ruler, but rewards granted by gracious decree and subject to limitation or revocation by similar decree. Even the Constitution of 1870-1, under which moreover all initiative rests with the Crown, was granted by an act of grace. 2 1 This principle has had frequent statement by autocratic rulers. That made at Laybach in 1821 in the name of the Holy Alliance in reference to the right of liberty asserted by revolutionary Greece is notable (cf. Morton Prince, From Webster to Wilson ', re- printed from the New York Times, Nov. 21, 1915, p. 8). * This has been called ' monarchial socialism '. Bismarck, who 1909 B io THE SUPER-STATE AND 4. The State as such is a sort of super-personality attaching to the Nation. It bears no analogy to the individual personality belonging to the individual citizen. Accordingly, the body of its responsibilities, rights, and duties in short, its moral code is not the same as that of the individual. As charged with the values of race and culture, it knows only the one race and the one culture. It cannot recognize reciprocal rights and obligations, with reference to other states, save for the advancement of its own interests ; since the values resident in other states are not its charge, but the charge of the states to which they belong, and may be antagonistic to its own. The code of individual morality developed in society is not applicable to the State ; there is no inter-state organization nor can there be, short of the abnegation of the true function of government to give sanction to this morality. Such a world organiza- tion of states, sometimes proposed, would reduce the value of the most powerful state and augment the power of the less fit, thus subverting the highest ends and values. So far, then, as one may speak of a national morality, one is bound to conclude that the sole imperative of national conduct enjoins upon the State the conservation and extension of the values with which it is charged the values of Race and Cultureby means of its own expansion and aggrandizement. 1 invented it, said : ' My idea was to bribe the working classes or shall I say, to win them over to regard the state as a social institution existing for their sake and interested in their welfare '. 1 Much is made of the ' historical ' character of the development of the values borne by the State, a sort of dignity and necessity, an air of ' destiny ', being thus imparted to the most commonplace and sordid details of aggression. For example, F. Naumann writes in Die Hilfe of Berlin : ' Even assuming that there had been THE 'ETERNAL VALUES' n III So far I have stated somewhat abstractly this theory of the State as resting upon a philosophy of value. It is interesting to see what further factors, springing from different and more special motives, fall together in support of it and in turn derive new life and support from it. i. In the first place, the view that the Race is the bearer of over-individual values, which are in turn lodged in the State, leads to the recognition of the biological theory of the survival and extension of poli- tical values. The biological school of political thinkers in Germany welcome the value-philosophy, and find in it the further justification of their view. Natural selection becomes not only a biological, but a social and political weapon ; it is the instrument of the conservation of over-individual values. The test of survival affords the criterion ; the national culture which survives has the highest value. 1 The world-relations of states are estab- lished by the struggle for existence, resulting in the conquest, repression, and absorption of the least-fit in Belgium an honourable sentiment of neutrality, the question remains whether a small individual state can have a right to stand aside from a historical process of reconstruction. . . . However friendly and sympathetic one's attitude may be toward the wishes of neutrals, one cannot in principle admit their right to stand aside from the general processes of centralization in the leadership of humanity.' Cited in the Phila. North American, Dec. 15, 1914. Another writer insists that war is necessary for c the healthy growth of progressive peoples and the historically necessary reduction of decadent nations ' such, one may suppose, as Belgium ! 1 History shows of course abundant illustrations of this process at work the triumph of the militarily fit over the morally and socially fit : the aesthetic culture of Greece succumbed to the military civilization of Rome, the destruction in the thirteenth century of the high Arabian culture was accomplished by the Turks whose fitness was that of brutal and fanatical barbarism, bringing into southern Europe the values of the unspeakable Turkish rule ! 12 THE SUPER-STATE AND states. In this struggle, the means employed are those of living nature in the same case: force, cunning, alliance, rivalry, whatever places in the hands of a race or state a better chance to win its way. Here the schools of Clausewitz, Treitschke, and Bernhardi join hands, and the biological justification of war, with all its military paraphernalia, is found in the theory of value. In this position, moreover, two main sorts of fitness are recognized, both legitimate because effective : the fitness of military force and that of inner organization. The second of these is social, while the first is biological and material. The German nation is both socially fit, organized that is in all the forms of a despotic regime, and racially fit, warlike by temperament, making good soldiers. The social organization of a democracy, which does not tend to second and further the military power of a state, is a source of weakness and deteriora- tion. Hence the dominance of quasi-military discipline throughout the entire social organization of modern Germany 1 and the violent official opposition to the Sozialdemokratie. 2. In another direction, too, the idea of over-individual value suggests older conceptions: it is a new name given to a series of value-ideas which have had a large place in the development of states. The religious value is notably one of these. It goes back to the beginning of human culture. The earliest governments, the most primitive social groups, were held together by the recog- nition of religious authority and the fear of religious sanctions. 2 The history of political development, in one 1 A state of things well brought out by Mr. Price Collier in his book, Germany and the Germans. * Put in evidence by recent researches of Durkheim (La Vie religieuse, &c.) and other French sociologists; cf. the present THE 'ETERNAL VALUES' 13 of its most prominent aspects, has revealed the gradual separation of political from religious values, and the relegation of the latter to a place apart from political discussion. The Church has reluctantly relinquished its temporal power. But while this movement has led properly to the relinquishment by the Church of its temporal power, it has not led, nor should it lead say the theorists of autocracy to the relinquishment by the State of its spiritual power. The State, not the Church, is the depository and vehicle of all the over-individual eternal values, including those spiritual values formerly held in trust, in undeveloped societies, by the Church. The Church, like all other social organs of the Nation, gets its right to be and its charter of action from the State. The State is the supreme spiritual authority ; it retains the ' divine right ' formerly held under the theocratic form of government in common with the Church. The Emperor becomes the high priest and spiritual leader, as well as the war lord and military chief. He is the organ of the divine will, which in him unites itself with the racial will-to-power. As the administrator of the over-morality which is also over-religious, he is the embodiment of the ' absolute religion ' of Hegel. It is but a comment upon the flexibility of this con- ceptionits critics would say, no doubt, the cynicism of its conceit that it is not a single religion, not a doctrinal creed, to which the State commits itself. As furthering its value, that is Itself, the State uses the Church, as it uses other merely instrumental values, as means to its higher ends. Lutheran Prussia, Catholic Austria, Mussulman Turkey, the free-thinking party and the writer's Genetic Theory of Reality, London and New York, Putnam, 1915, chaps, vi, vii. 14 THE SUPER-STATE AND religious sect, all may be employed by the authority which pursues the ends of State-culture. The State accepts the religious weapon, as also the military weapon and the diplomatic weapon, which lies nearest to hand. 1 Here, then, is the theoretical justification of divine right : the Kaiser, being head of the Church and organ of the spiritual value of the Nation, is the mouth-piece of divine authority, as he is also that of military authority, being head of the Dynasty, the racial organ of nationality. He combines racial value with spiritual dignity, religious prerogative with armed force, the divine tolerance of God with the decree of dynastic and racial exclusiveness ! 2 3. The obverse of this is the claim, made in theory and practice, to be a ' chosen people '. This also is not new ; it follows from a theory which justifies any sort of theocracy. If our God is ours, then we are His ; we glorify Him, and He chooses and commissions us. In battle He is on our side, for we are His chosen people. In religious history, the chosen people are depicted in all the figures of a high national self-esteem, from that of the servant and soldier of the Most High to that of the bride and queen of the Anointed. No fuller and more enlightening picture of this relationship could be 1 The difference between this and the democratic tolerance, which recognizes the independence of any and all religious creeds, resides in this, that in the autocracy all religions in common yield up their independence and surrender their liberty as the private citizen does to the State, the supreme spiritual authority. The State graciously makes use of the several religions. The philosopher Schleiermacher (Discourse on Religion, Berlin, 1831) taught that true religion can only be understood and felt by Germans ; it is impossible to the English on account of their cupidity, and to the French on account of their immorality ! 2 See the lecture of Prof. Baumgarten of Kiel, ' The War and the Sermon on the Mount/ in the series Deutsche Reden in schwerer Zeit, Berlin, 1915-16. THE 'ETERNAL VALUES' 15 imagined than that by which the Old Testament depicts it. Here the divine seal was set upon the racial value, and all sorts of means which might serve as instruments of a higher purpose were justified relentless warfare, the extermination of alien tribes, crimes nameless in character and countless in number, committed in accom- plishment of a national destiny which was also a divine fulfilment. Never has the efficacy of the 'will-to- believe ' had a better historical demonstration than that furnished by the belief of a ' chosen people ' in its divine commission. In this factor of the German theory, another current of popular and racial pre-judgement finds an open channel in the philosophy of value. 1 4. A further factor in the culture of contemporary Germany comes from the side of ethics to reinforce all this : a factor which, from its literary presentation and alluring teaching of super-individualism is second in my opinion to no other. I refer to the ethical theory of F. Nietzsche. It is a variant on the same theme, an independent contribution to the theory of value, couched in a brilliant and capricious style, and abounding in mordant criticisms of the German State, which only serve to bring out its latent nationalism. Nietzsche taught that the conventional social man of modern Christian civilization is slavish, degenerate, not because, as Rousseau would say, he is too cultured, but because he is born in a social and religious milieu which is fit only to make of him a slave. The morality of what in our daily life we call 'good and evil', 1 No doubt my hearers have read the extracts from recent sermons of German pastors, printed in the Standard of December 4, 1915. Whether authentic in detail or not, they show the character of the * divine fury ' added to the military furor Teutoni- cus. Cf. the lecture by Baumgarten, cited on the preceding page. 16 THE SUPER-STATE AND the morality of the virtues commonly set store by obedience, mercy, pity, loyalty, fraternity, justice is that of slaves, not of freemen. The typical real man would be the super-man, a virile unrestrained and unmoralized example of the ' will-to-power '. He repre- sents an irruption out of the original racial virility. His is the morality, or the immorality, of over-individual value, the ' master morality ' of domination, subjugation of the weak, imposition of self by sheer force of nature and will. He is a rule unto himself because he cannot be less than exceptional, less than great. He does not ask for the right to rule, he takes it ; that is his only and sufficient privilege : and he succeeds in imposing his will-to-power; that is his only and sufficient justification. How this falls in with the factors already mentioned! the factors of the autocratic theory : the merely instru- mental value of morality, the right of might, the role of struggle and selection, the priority of race with its virile will-to-subjugate, the military suppression of the weak and defenceless, the dominance of a royal person, dynasty or class, the regime of violence. Nietzsche's teaching is largely responsible for the wide popular acceptance of the tyranny of the military class; for although he himself uses the subjection of the German people to the monstrous State to illustrate the slave morality, still the master morality is that of the typical and exceptional personality which, in having the power to dominate, has also the right. When made over into a political theory, it justifies all the autocratic pretensions of a privileged military class. 1 Every petty militarist 1 I am aware that there is another opinion in regard to Nietzsche himself, "who criticized so severely the German State and railed at the citizens' subserviency to it. But when we examine Nietzsche's ethical doctrine, we find that in its spirit it fits so snugly into the THE ' ETERNAL VALUES' 17 greets the super-man in his own dressing-mirror ; and the master morality of such a super-man shows itself superior to the slavish virtues of the crowd. We have seen many of these super-men in this war not only masters of submarines and officers of firing squads, but philosophers defending these and royalties reward- ing them. The Zabern affair, and other such incidents, showed their existence before the war. How easy is the transition from the super-man to the Super-State ! The man on the street in Berlin makes this transition after reading Nietzsche. As the super- man imposes himself upon other men, exercising the master morality, so the true, the divine State, the Super- State, imposes itself upon other states which serve as its instruments. The super-individual seizes what he wants when he can, bears down all opposition by force, knows no such thing as the word of honour save as means of domination, good only so long as it misleads other men ; so the Super-State, armed and aggressive, signs treaties as means to the acquisition, peacefully or other- wise, of the territory and property of other nations. 1 theory of state domination, that his personal revolt against mili- tarism counts for little. He is one of his own exceptions. The formula of the 'will-to-power' deserves to be, as it has become, the motto of the Hegelian State. Possibly Nietzsche himself would have called the idea of the Super-State an unauthorized extension of that of the super-man ; but if an extension, it is not a perversion. For while Nietzsche used the people's attitude toward the state to illustrate the slave morality, it is quite in keeping with this to say that the State illustrates on the other hand the master morality. 1 The character of the teachings of militarists in Germany from Frederick the Great to the latest writers has been abundantly shown in recent publications (see, for example, the book, The War from this Side, Phila., 1915, pp. 126 ff.). A telling bit of evidence is to be found in the remarkable comparative analysis of the German and French military code-books (the official German Kriegsgebrauch im Landkriege, 1902) published by E. Doumerge, Le Droitet la Force, 1909 i8 THE SUPER-STATE AND To it the small and weak states are by reason of their powerlessness the fitting objects of attack. 1 All that we are now familiar with in German practice, justified as it is by the theory of over-individual values, gets further justification from the over-individualism of Nietzsche's ethical teaching, carried into the theory of the State. Those who have followed the development of the German argument since the beginning of the war know that I do not here exaggerate. The professors, thinkers, theologians, literary men have been the foremost de- fenders of policies which obscure or defy the funda- mental principles of ordinary that is ' slave ' morality, under such phrases as 'national destiny', 'military necessity ', ' biological law ' all terms which reflect the theory of value. Here the very ' trans- valuation of all values', which Nietzsche himself described, is accom- plished in the larger theatre of international struggle. 2 Librairie de Foi et Vie, Paris, 1915, especially (pp. 31-2) as regards the German instructions respecting the non-enforcement of the regulations of the Hague conventions. The following citation from Major-General v. Disfurth in the Hamburger Nachrichten shows the spirit of the instructions given to the German soldiers : ' Frankly, we are,and must be barbarians, if by this we understand those who wage war relentlessly and to the uttermost degree. We owe no explanations to any one. Every act of whatever nature committed by our troops for the purpose of discouraging, defeating, and destroying our enemies, is a brave act and a good act. Our troops must achieve victory. What else matters ? ' 1 The German Chancellor, announcing to the Reichstag the ' injustice ' done in the violation of Belgian territory, adds these significant words : ' those who like us are fighting for the highest ideals must only consider how victory can be gained' that is, injustice is instrumental to the ' highest ideals ' (values). 2 Read this from the pen of the popular writer Maximilian Harden : ' Cease the pitiful efforts to excuse Germany's action ! . . . Not as weak-minded blunderers have we undertaken the fearful risk of this war. We willed it because we had to will it and could THE 'ETERNAL VALUES' 19 IV Various aspects of the German case, both theoretical and practical, have been summarized in apt phrases and epigrams which appeal to the general public. ' Necessity knows no law', 'might makes right', and other such terse sentences hit off with peculiar force this philosophy of domination. Maintaining that the exposition made above is a fair statement, on the side of theory, 1 of the politics of what is known as pan-Germanism, we may well revise some of these popular sayings, throwing them into forms in which their practical application in war might be accepted by the German value-philosopher. The reason for each of these statements, as I now give them, is so plain, in the light of the theory expounded above, that no extended comment upon these ' Maxims of pan-Germanic policy ' as I may call them is necessary. 1. Necessity (of State) knows no (moral) law. This is only to say that so-called moral law is merely of instru- mental value, while the necessity of State represents an end in itself, an eternal value. 2. (Over-individual) might makes (individual) right. will it ... We do not stand, and shall not place ourselves, before the court of Europe. Our power shall create new law in Europe- Germany strikes ! * 1 As already intimated, the fundamental points of the entire theory are present in German idealism as developed since Fichte : cf. V. Delbos, L'Esprit philosophique de V Allemagne, Paris, 1915. Fichte, in his famous ' Addresses to the German Nation ' gave to that nation a divine mission as representing * all humanity ' in its highest typical form ; a thought enlarged upon in 1816 by Hegel in these words : ' we have received by nature the mission supreme to be the guardians of the sacred fire '. To Hegel is due the identification of the Nation with the State, and with this the denial to the State of the moral obligations of individuals ; all of which led to the view which finds in the State and Dynasty the absolute and eternal values of Race and Kultur, and in war the proper means of their extension. 20 THE SUPER-STATE AND This is the full justification of militarism as a national policy. Might in the hands of the State is both the tool and the evidence of that higher morality which is the privilege of the super-man and the Super- State. Force, aggression, dominance, these are the instruments of the master morality. 3. The (over-individual) end justifies the (individual} means. In other words, the cynical expression ' war is war ' is justified, whatever the means of war. All these means are put into the hands of a soldiery blinded by passion and exploited by officers who direct them. The casuistry of the Jesuit and the subtle irony of the Michiavellian become the explicit theory, the open practice, of the pan-German. 4. Treaties are (individually) binding agreements (signed with over-individual reservations). Of course, the reser- vations may be made by all the parties to the treaties, and it is to be assumed that they are so made. 1 Each party re- presents a State which has its own over-individ ual values to conserve. It is then the part of the master morality to be the first in the field ; to strike before the small nation can resist ; to ' hack the way through ' ; to promise repa- ration, with the reservation that it is to be made by levies of millions of pounds ; to agree to recognize the red cross emblems, with the reservation that this recognition shall take the form of the bombardment of hospitals on land and sea ; to agree to respect neutral passengers at sea, with the reservation that these people, simply by being at sea, expose themselves to attack ! The way of the treaty, the international promise, is superseded by the way of the struggle for existence. 1 A German philosophical writer of standing declares that none of the parties to the guarantee of Belgian neutrality ' took the matter seriously ' ; that the British attitude was pure hypocrisy. But what shall we say of the Belgian attitude of confidence in the guarantee ? THE ' ETERNAL VALUES' 21 5. Once a German, always (the bearer of eternal value). This is the theory of the law of Delbruck, upon which is based the practice of naturalized Germans in other countries. It revives the old form of tribal chauvinism seen in the antitheses of Jew and gentile, Roman and slave, Greek and barbarian. No German is allowed to sell his civil and racial birth-right for the 'mess of pottage' of citizenship in another state. The oath of allegiance and the passport duly sworn to in a foreign land have only instrumental value. They are to be used to further the eternal value present in the German race. 1 A number of German naval officers, released on their word of honour in America, took the first oppor- tunity to run away; and so common did this become that they are no longer released on parole. In contrast with this let us note the isolated case of a French aviator who escaped from Switzerland only, however, after duly withdrawing his parole in writing; he was promptly returned to captivity in Switzerland by the French Government. Who has heard of the German Govern- ment disowning any of those who betray their honour for her sake ? No ! they are but showing their devotion to the over-individual, the eternal value of the State. 6. Germany (the Super-State) over all. This is the significance of the motto of the pan-Germanic State ' Deutschland uber alles '. Its credentials are those of organization and force the means by which it asserts 1 L. H. Grondijs, a Dutch observer in Belgium, in the book Choses vues, writes of the German soldier at Louvain : ' he draws the veritable conclusion of the new German theory finding absolution accorded in advance for whatever he does. The immense value of the most modest German military man is such that, if a single soldier is killed, this city is thereby damned and all its inhabitants lose their right to live.' 22 THE SUPER-STATE AND the master principle of Super-State morality. Its organization is imposed by military discipline upon the German citizen in the family, the play-ground, the school, the church to whom the ' strengst verboten ' of the military authority takes the place of the ' thou shalt not ' of the moral law. 7. Finally Me (the super-man) and God (the supreme value). What values in a single figure ! No wonder that a German thinker has recently said : ' the nation and the Kaiser are one; there is no distinction to be made between people and Emperor '. 'Me ' the State, the Race, the Eternal ! V Having now stated the German case, I think fairly, and without more than the natural pre-judgement of one who does not accept its conclusions, I wish to indicate the opposing point of view, still holding to what is legitimate and permanent in the theory of value. If we should characterize the theory now expounded, naming it by a single familiar word, we should call it a revival of the theory of ' Autocracy '. In it, the auto- cratic State is justified as being of the highest or of absolute value. Opposed to this is, of course, the theory of Democracy. I shall point out briefly, further down, how it too appeals to the theory of value, placing the over-individual and eternal values in something very different from an auto- cratic State having a royal dynastic right to govern. I wish, however, to set the matter forth, in the first instance, by citing certain events and results of the war, up to the present, which show the rivalry of the two theories of the State and the common principles on which they rest. The war has produced what we call a crisis of Inter- THE 'ETERNAL VALUES' 23 nationalism the apparent breakdown of all or most of those steps of progress which the last fifty years had seen erected toward the high landing of international fraternity and peace. These approaches to a rational cosmopolitanism and fraternity were much in evidence in several more or less distinct domains, which we may describe as those of socialism, citizenship, culture, and politics. The cultural internationalism seen in literary and scientific congresses, university exchanges, and the cosmopolitanism of science ; the political internationalism of the Hague conventions, together with that of arbitra- tion and the judicial settlement of disputes ; the fraternal internationalism of the brotherhood of labour as seen in socialistic organizations ; and the civic internationalism of the free exchange of the rights of citizenship through naturalization all and each of those forms of inter- national fellowship has suffered shipwreck for the time upon one or both of the two rocks which represent over-individual values, the Race and the State. This fact must be recognized by any theory as to the meaning of this war. We have seen that the German theory is founded upon the recognition of these two great facts, Race and State, to which it gives over-individual value, and which it locates in the Sovereign and the Dynasty. I cannot discuss in detail these outstanding cases of the failure of internationalism, the bankruptcy of paci- fism ; but a word or two upon each of them will serve to locate the rock of disaster to which I referred just above. i. The disintegration of international Socialism is one of the most extraordinary phenomena of the war. The Internationale ouvriere had its origin in the warfare against war. Its one article of faith has been the duty of the working men the world over to unite in their refusal to fight, to go on strike before taking arms, to 24 THE SUPER-STATE AND force peace in the name of the brotherhood of the working classes. But what has become of this now ? Socialists are fighting with other true patriots in every country at war. They have their defence ; and from the mass of literature of this defence, one may gather the chief reasons which they allege for their participa- tion in the conflict. Socialists are generally democratic. With their pacifism goes a democratic theory of the rights of man and of the morality of nations. We find, accordingly* two principles announced in the socialistic war-mani- festoes : first, that of the democratic equality of Nations l in relation to one another, based upon the unity and sovereignty of each State, its right to exist and to defend its existence ; and second, the principle of Race, the right of a race to define itself, to govern itself, and to maintain its political integrity in its own territory. The socialists assembled in each of the countries now at war 2 have protested against the aggression of one state upon another, and defended the rights of race and of racial states. By these two ideas, which run through their manifestoes, the socialists justify the abandonment of internation- alism. They all say alike that they defend the principles of equal national rights and of racial integrity and self-government. In Germany alone has there been serious dissension in the socialistic party, the Sozial- demokratie. The steadily diminishing 3 majority of the party has been held loyal only by intimida- 1 Generally known as the 'principle of Nationality '. a Based on the declarations of sociologists of neutral countries at Copenhagen in January 1915, those of the Entente at London in February 1915, those of the Central Empires at Vienna in April 19*5- 3 In the recent (December 1915) division in the Reichstag on THE 'ETERNAL VALUES ' 25 tion 1 and by the pretence that the government was also acting upon the same two principles : namely, first, that the war was one of aggression upon Germany on the part of her multiple enemies, and second, that the Germanic race was threatened by the Slavic hordes ready to pour over western Europe from Russia. The German socialists, therefore, although not so unified as those of other countries, have no less than these justified their support of their government by an appeal to the demo- cratic principles of national and racial integrity. We thus see that even in the most democratic and radical organizations of modern labour, this crisis has shown the vitality, the ineradicable vitality, of the over- individual values of Nationality and Race, 2 in contrast with the individual values of the abstract ' rights of man ' and the 'brotherhood of labour* so violently defended not the new war credits, a minority consisting of 43, from the party of no, refused to vote for the government (there were 20 nays and 23 abstentions). The matter has led to active contests in the local socialist councils, some of them (Berlin, Pirna, Lower Rhine, Leipzig) having voted in support of the action of the minority of the deputies of the party. The Central Committee of the party voted on January 8, 1916, to condemn the dissenting deputies, but also by a divided vote (28 to n). The issue which is likely to threaten more and more the unity of the party is that of the future annexa- tion of territory (Belgium, Servia, &c.). 1 See in the Temps, January 25 and 29, 1916, the account by H. Hudson, a neutral observer, of the operation of the militdrische Schutzhaft (preventive arrest by military authority) and other repressive measures applied to the social-democrats. a Of these two notions, Nationality and Race, the German socialists emphasize the latter vaguely enough, making Race a badge of nationality through the medium of the State. The socialists of the allied countries insist more on Nationality, which is a psychological rather than racial conception, claiming that the Germanic empires, by including in their claim Alsace, Schleswig- Holstein, and the vast Slavic populations of Austria- Hungary, exist in flagrant violation of the principle of Race. 1009 D 26 THE SUPER-STATE AND long ago on the rostrum and in the resolutions of the internationalist party. Even now the motives of national and racial development are concealed under the tradi- tional formulas of individual choice and personal liberty, combined with demands for the limitation of armaments and the extension of arbitration; but their power as motives to action has never been more clearly demon- strated than in the present conflict. How then, we may be asked, does this defence of nationalism and race differ from that contained in the German theory described above ? Just in this, that it denies the step, essential to the autocratic theory, which identifies these over-individual values of nation and race with the State, the dynastic government, as such. To the socialists the State is not the Nation, though it may with more or less adequacy represent the Nation. This is a difference to which I am to recur again. It explains the opposition of the growing minority of the social democratic party in the Reichstag. 2. A second striking phenomenon of the war which bears in the same direction is that seen in the complica- tions which have arisen in various countries concerning citizenship. The easy assumption made heretofore was that citizenship was determined by documentary evi- dence, by birth certificates, passports properly signed, and naturalization papers duly sworn to. The desire of a man to change his country was taken to be sufficient evidence of his bona fides in doing so. If a European is so dissatisfied with his country that he crosses the ocean to better his lot, and chooses the government that suits him best, the clear assumption is that he prefers this latter, and that his new oath of allegiance is sincere. N6 doubt in most cases he thinks so himself. But the war has proved the contrary everywhere. In THE 'ETERNAL VALUES' 27 Switzerland x and the United States it has revealed an alarming state of things. The revelation of the weak- ness of adopted citizenship, even after two or three generations, is appalling. It appears that the assimilation of foreigners is too often only ' skin deep ', so to speak ; that oaths of allegiance are often taken for convenience and comfort of living ; that passports may become only passwords through the lines of demarcation of more fundamental loyalties ; that the adopted flag may be used to conceal the bomb and the 'browning 1 , or as the comedy-mask of treachery and cynical disloyalty. For the United States the break-down of naturalization is a sign of a national crisis of the gravest character ; for with it appear signs of a weakening of national sentiment, just when its strengthening is needed to deal with a danger of such magnitude to the unity of the nation. In view of this danger and of a certain nervelessness in the official handling of it, the American citizen finds himself in the presence of two significant truths. First, there is the upheaval of racial and national factors and values, showing the futility of the artificial and merely legal means of assimilation of the foreign population upon which the country had relied. The psychologist sees in this the recrudescence of those sub- conscious elements of personality, inherent in heredity as well as ingrained by centuries of culture, upon which 1 See the article by E. Bovey in Wissen und Leben, Zurich, 1915, on the question as it concerns Switzerland. The inquiry resulting from the case of Sauerbruch (a professor of Zurich who dismissed his Swiss assistant because the latter's sentiments were not suffi- ciently pro-German) reveals a dangerous germanizing of Swiss institutions of learning. A similar warning in respect to Holland is sounded in the Review Amsterdammer> in view of the rush of Germans to secure Dutch naturalization ; the writer cites the disloyalty of Germans naturalized in Belgium when the war broke out. 28 THE SUPER-STATE AND the varnish of new social status and political liberty had been later spread. Given the occasion, the crisis suffi- cient to compel the choice of alternatives, and it appears that the real citizen is determined not by agreements, nor entirely by his social environment, but largely by his blood. Another thing, second, that the present situation shows, especially in America, is that a composite country, although forming politically a single state, may not be a single nation, but a collection of fragments or truncated members of other nations. Such a state may be found to lack unity in its organism, loyalty in its counsels. The present neutral policy of the United States has shown this. Behind the invertebrate sentimentalism and commercialism which calls itself sententiously the * new freedom ', a chorus of confused national aspira- tions and allegiances makes itself heard. 1 The unity of the British Empire, on the contrary, apparently a magnificent exception to my statement, is perhaps due to the wide recognition given, in the self-governing colonies, to the differences of nationality and race. Here again, therefore, in the failure of naturalization, the ships of internationalism and pacifism suffer ship- wreck on the rock of Race. The autocratic German Government utilizes the over-individual value of race. 2 The Delbriick law, already cited, practically makes the claim, ' once a German always a German ', and serves 1 See the writer's American Neutrality, its Cause and Cure, London and New York, Putnam, 1916, for detailed discussions of the effects of the war upon the United States. 2 Lamprecht, the late pan-Germanist historian, says: 'the Empire is to-day no longer a political body located in a limited territory ; it is a living power active through the universe : it is found wherever German interests extend their tentacles '. THE 'ETERNAL VALUES' 29 notice on all Germans, naturalized in other countries, that they remain at the command of the Fatherland for any service it may impose, under penalties of the gravest nature for disobedience. 1 That it is effective is seen in the actions of naturalized Germans the world over, notably in the United States. Democracy is tending more and more to recognize the factor of race and to merge it in that of nationality. Here common ground is found, up to a certain point, with autocracy. The practical outcome would seem to be a system in which nationality, inclusive of differ- ences of race, is not identified with government, that is with the State ; but in which the government rests flexible and maniable, meeting the varying demands of race under a common democratic administration, somewhat as in the British Empire. This is wide as the antipodes from the German autocratic State, having its imperial family in which the values of race and nation are once for all incorporated. This may serve to indicate the point sufficiently : the war has shown that racial differences are ineradicable, and that any permanent adjustment of international relations must take them into account. Furthermore, the tests of citizenship, together with the penalties of disloyalty, must be prompt in their action and severe in their force. All the democratic countries have suffered 1 Naturalization in another country does not cause the loss of German citizenship save after ten years' continuous residence out of Germany subsequent to such naturalization, and with the preliminary consent of the competent German authorities. Before the Delbriick law (1914) the regulations in force, dating from 1870, under which fall most of the cases arising now, did not admit naturalization in a foreign country among the causes of the loss of German citizenship. Cf. an article in the Temps, signed A. W. (November 24, 1915). 30 THE SUPER-STATE AND cruelly from the organized espionage and intrigue which loose naturalization laws have permitted. Even the hospitality of diplomatic residence, with its exemptions based upon honour, has been used to screen and abet the most treacherous violations of the oath of citizenship. 3. In another of the provinces mentioned, that of peace conventions and treaties looking to arbitration, the same deplorable condition of things presents itself: the war seems to have given the coup de grace also to this sort of internationalism. Certainly there does not seem to be much substance left in the conventions of the Hague, in the international rules of war, in the treaties providing for arbitration. But here we must recognize the fact that the responsibility for this state of things does not rest upon the democratic belligerents. Nor are they in any sense prepared to give these things up ; on the contrary, it is to preserve them in principle and to make them effective in practice that the ' war to the finish ' is decreed. From the violation of Belgian territory to the last outrage upon passenger ships at sea, the clauses of international law and convention have been violated one by one by the Germanic powers, the representatives of the autocratic theory of the State. 1 In this matter there can be no common ground between autocracy and democracy. Democracy knows no such principle as 'the over-individual end justifies any individual means'. The system of morality which overrides ' good and evil ', treating its own signature as of merely instrumental value to the high necessities of conquest, putting into 1 The alleged violations of the rights of neutral commerce on the part of the Allies have been of the nature of reprisals taken after the fact of German crimes which were intolerable to law and humanity alike. The rules of trade, it should be remembered, are prudential conventions merely, not principles of equity or morality. THE * ETERNAL VALUES' 31 practice on land and sea the distinction between the slave morality of chivalry, humanity, and justice, and that of the master culture, not hesitating to show its mastery by wreaking its force upon sleeping babes and toiling market-women, nor to exploit its will-to-power in the realm of historical culture by burning the manu- scripts in the library of the University of Louvain, and by continuing for months the interesting process of blow- ing the heads off the statues of the Cathedral of Rheims this system of morality finds its representatives only among peoples brought up on the theories of Hegel and Nietzsche and confirmed in their education by the apolo- getics of the Harnacks, the Wundts, and the Euckens. 4. As to the general field of cultural relations repre- sented by the interchange of professors and lecturers, the scientific congresses, the various sorts of comity which existed among the nations in matters literary and artistic, all this has also been interrupted, for how long no one can say. We had thought that science had no country, that literature was sincerely disinterested, that philosophy represented logical and reasonable convic- tion, that art had its own self-contained criteria. We now find all the devotees of the things of the spirit, however, using their talents each in defence of his own country, seeming to make the ' lesser appear the greater reason ', finding in the most abstract and ideal thought of his enemies defects due to vicious politics and faults due to racial inferiority. All may be to blame, all are human ; but as a citizen of a country that is not at war, I may be allowed the opinion that the part taken in the German propaganda l by the ' intellectuals ' is more 1 I refer not only to the ' German Appeal to the Civilized World ' (by Ninety-three Intellectuals), but to the entire body of publications of which the letter of Haeckeland Eucken (see the New York Times, September 10, 1914) ; the article of Wundt in Scientia, January i, 32 THE SUPER-STATE AND discouraging for the future than any of the other mani- festations of international intolerance : for it reveals the subservience of these men if not to the commands, at least to the exigencies of the military regime. They define what one of these writers has called the ' spiri- tual content of life l in terms of dynastic, militaristic, and racial force ; a step which merely adds to the burden to be thrown off in time in Europe by the forces of democratic morality and politics. A German may sincerely believe that his culture is worth defending, even that the Prussian royal house represents the eternal values which sanction any and all methods of warfare ; but to state that English greed and French revengeful- ness were the actual causes of this war, 2 that the Russian espousal of the cause of Servia was not justified by the Austrian intimidation of that small country, that the cause of Germany is that of Protestantism and of Chris- tianity, that Belgian neutrality was threatened and even violated by England and France 3 such special plead- 1915 ; the ' Appeal to Christians of Protestant Churches ' ; and the book * America and the War', by H. Miinsterberg (especially the last chapter) may be taken as examples. 1 Der geistige Lebensinhalt, by R. Eucken. In a recent lecture, this writer develops the proposition that German idealism differs from Oriental and Greek idealism in holding * that every individual will must efface itself before the development of the State '. 2 Haeckel and Eucken write : ' England fights not only on the side of barbarism but also of moral injustice, for it is not to be forgotten that Russia began the war because she would permit no radical reparation for a shameful murder.' ' England promptly seized upon the invasion of Belgium, so necessary to Germany, in order that she might cover with a small cloak of decency her brutal national egoism.* 8 Wundt writes (Sctentia, January 1915) : * Belgium had ceased to be neutral by reason of treaties concluded in 1906 and November 1909.' He thus supports German action in August 1914 on the ground of supposed agreements only found in the Belgian archives in October ! THE 'ETERNAL VALUES' 33 ings, in the face of open facts, are those of men who have lost something of their independence, and with it much of the respect of their compeers the world over. 1 VI It results not only from our theoretical exposition, but also from these actual phenomena of the war, that of the two great motives at work, those of Race and State, the latter is the more significant. The war is a conflict of States rather than a conflict of Races. The German theory, as we saw, includes both these factors, uniting them in the theory and in the political practice of the State. On the other side, the forces at work in the democratic countries and in their ally Russia 2 represent also the demands of racial unity and freedom, but make them subordinate to socialistic and democratic principles. 1 The President of the German Association of International Law, Professor Niemeyer of Kiel, has proposed to the Association that it separate itself from the International Association. * German interests ', he says, * are different from those of other countries, and the tendencies of her international law are also different. Hence for Germans these questions must be debated exclusively among themselves, the first question being that of the liberty of the sea ' (Lokal-Anzeiger, quoted by the Echo de Paris, January 10, 1916). In other words, Germany is to have an international law of her own making. One of the most famous philosophers of Europe, of a neutral country, writes in a private letter as follows : ' It is a monstrous pharisaism when our German colleagues assure us that their government and military system are fighting for high culture. A German judge lately wrote me that Germany was now undergoing the same treatment as Christ, who was spit upon because he represented the Highest. Into such blasphemy has German chauvinism developed.' 2 In Russia, possibly more than in any other country at war, the racial influence is prominent ; but it has identified itself with the defence of small states, not with the autocratic pretensions of imperialism, and has the support of the Russian socialists. 1909 E 34 THE SUPER-STATE AND For them the over-individual values of race are taken up in those of Nationality. Moreover, the secondary place of the racial factor is seen in the actual grouping of the nations at war. There is no real alignment drawn on the principle of race. The empire of Austria-Hungary, more Slav than German, 1 is arrayed against Russia; Britain, of Germanic origin, against Germany; the Bulgarians, allied with their racial enemies, are fighting the Russians, their racial friends, under the orders of a prince of a still different race; Greece violates the racial call, no less than the political duty, in supporting her foreign king in the interests of a dynasty that is repugnant to the popular feeling ; the Germanic champions of race form alliance with the unspeakable Turk, the marauder and burglar of Europe. Certainly there is no racial alignment here, although the demands of race may be and probably will be prominent, if the socialists have their way, in the final settlement. It is on the theory of the State, therefore, that every- thing hinges. What, finally, is the point of difference ? There is really only one fundamental point of difference between the two sides, and just here appears the advan- tage of stating the issue in terms of the theory of Value. Granted that the over-individual values of civilization belong in some way to the Nation, it is then the following step that makes the difference. The German theory declares that the nation is the State ; hence the head of the State, the dynastic ruler, is the divine Viceroy : the 1 * In 1910 Austria had 28 million inhabitants, of which only 10 million were Germans. In Hungary, out of a population of 21 millions, a little more than 2 millions were German. In the whole Empire, including Bosnia and Herzegovina, hardly more than one -fifth is German' (Phila. North American, August 19, 1914). THE < ETERNAL VALUES' 35 State, endowed with its master-code, becomes the Super- State in Weltpolitik and in war. The democratic theory and practice goes precisely in the opposite direction, starting out also from the Nation. The Nation is the organized people, the citizenry, which finds in the state its natural development and uses the state as its means of expression. The Nation embodies one or several races. In this all varieties of democratic doctrine agree, from that of the extreme individualistic theory of the 1 rights of man ', to those of the more organic theories, which see in the Nation a mode of social organization sui generis, conserving and restating the individual values. All the forms of democratic theory, in short, issue in a view of the state which assigns to it merely instru- mental value. Throughout all the activities of the state the individual retains his autonomy and personal liberty, and the nation its constitutional form. The state is not the Nation, it is an organ of the Nation. The state is shaped, reshaped, changed, transformed, with the growth of the people and the exigencies of the national life. Here then is the full contrast: to the one view the nation is the instrument of the State, to the other the state is the instrument of the Nation. Self-government by the people through the constitutional head, respon- sibility of this head to the people : these are in popular terms the principles of democratic government. The meaning of the formula, ' government of the people, for the people, and by the people ', is as familiar in fact in England as it is in the United States. In the theoretical statement, therefore, the opposition between autocracy and democracy is as sharp as is the conflict on the battle-field. This opposition has never been purely theoretical ; the development of democratic 36 THE SUPER-STATE AND institutions has in practice preceded part passu with the statement of principles which have justified them- selves by their actual working. The present war does not present a new issue; 1 it really presents nothing new, except the new apologies in theory and the new methods of practising war. But in the German theory we have an apology for autocracy, which in radical pre- tensions, revolutionary morals, the justification of exclu- sively biological and physical means, presents a com- bination of impressive consistency and uncompromising directness. It combines certain of the most telling intellectual achievements of the last half century with older traditional beliefs, which are thus given a new lease of life : natural selection is brought into support of divine right, physical force is made the instrument of master morality, autocracy is advocated in the name of social reform and popular progress. By reason of its form of statement this new autocratic doctrine admits of only one refutation. Its acknow- ledged means is force, its avowed method of propagation is that of war. All argument from morality is superseded, all appeals to logic and good faith alike are predestined to failure ; these things are all of instrumental, not of absolute value. From the 'eternal' point of view, a dominant State is all that counts, and it is our business to decide which State is fit to dominate. Thus the gauntlet is thrown down, the appeal is made to arms; by arms alone can it be decided. It remains then for the democratic States to show that, by the use of the weapon of their adversary, Force, 1 The same conception of the issue presented by the war is ably set forth by the author of * British and German Ideals ', reprinted from the Round Table, September 1914 to March 1915. See also A. Nystrom, Before, During, and After 1014, London, 1915. THE 'ETERNAL VALUES' 37 they can demonstrate the superiority of Justice, which is their own. 1 Democracy has met this emergency more than once in history in wars of defence, in revolutions, in civil conflicts. No one can doubt the outcome, no one who cherishes the values of human liberty. Pity it is that all the friends of democracy and freedom cannot array themselves or do not! with those now in the line of battle. The more glory to those who see their duty and, seeing, perform it! In the meantime we see clearly where the real values lie, and how they are to be increased. The conscience of mankind compares the German State of to-daygreat, forceful, ruthless with the smaller State which has become in the material sense its victim, Belgium. The German State is stronger, but by universal consent the Belgian State is greater. Belgium, exiled and penniless, has conserved and extended the highest values of our common human inheritance. Her image will quicken the pulse and brighten the eye when the 'mailed fist, 1 Certainly nothing else can demonstrate it, not pacifism, nor legal and over-nice distinctions about details of neutrality. The tone of the American President's protests to England on minor commercial points is absolutely incomprehensible to most informed Americans, who feel apart from interested commercial firms and members of Congress who speak for them that these things are insignificant in the presence of German crimes against law and humanity. I am entirely of the opinion of Professor E. B. Poulton as to the over-sensitiveness of the British Government to American opinion (Poulton, Romanes Lecture, ' Science and the Great War,' Oxford, 1915, pp. 34 ff.). I may cite, in illustration of this sensitiveness, a minor incident from my own experience with the British censor. An article on 'Neutrality', in which some strictures were made on the President's policy, was accepted with words of strong approval by the editor of one of the London weekly journals, only to be suppressed, as the editor informed me, by the Press Bureau. The article appeared in full in Paris (see the journal Foi et Vie, July i, 1915). 38 SUPER-STATE AND 'ETERNAL VALUES' and the ' rattling sword ' shall have lost their power of destruction. We may ask the apologists, Eucken, Harnack, Ostwald, Wundt and the rest, by which of these two States the ' spiritual content of life ' has really been advanced. FOURTEEN DAY USE RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED This book is due on the last date stamped below, or on the date to which renewed. Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. ! ?kn'56PT * ._w L; LD 1 JAM IT iarc LU ^j[^7i -"4ind||i|K \ u ^ w^ L i70ec'64DT s ~ 1 MAR 1 1 YFfl ^ii'/^im i * ium\ JL J. ICJUf.^ nr rtc,w iJ L.B CLjJ /N|/*j lOu 3Aug59C8i ^10 4^M 15Hr'65sK f^pr^P LT) REC'D LD IIU on JUK^ MAP 2 '6^-7 Pfc |UL. tj Cf i^w- 7Mar*1sr APR 17 1961' LD 21-100m-2 '55 General Library (B139s22)476 University of California Berkeley