UNIVERSITY OF CALIFO ■' =.==3 ^ GIFT OF Larry Laughlin THE WAR .-i— . AND — CULTURE A REPLY TO PROFESSOR MUNSTERBERG BY JOHN COWPER POWYS G ARNOLD SHAW, Publisher NEW YORK The War and Culture THE WAR AND CULTURE A REPLY TO PROFESSOR MUNSTERBERG BY JOHN COWPER POWYS 8$aff Lecturer on Literature for Oxford Univertitf Extension Delegacf. Education Department Free City of Hamburg. Verein fuer Neuere Philologie, Dresden and Leipxig. University Lecturers' Association, New York PUBLISHED BY G. ARNOLD SHAW NEW YORK 1914 Copyright, 1914, by G. Arnold Shaw CHAPTER I. CAUSES OF THE WAR. Professor Miinsterberg's book, entitled "The War and America," claims to lift the contro- versy about this war out of the unworthy region of bitter and personal recrimination, into the nobler atmosphere of large political ideas and great world-movements. His contention is, that, judged from this standpoint, the war must put Germany, in the eyes of all justice-loving Amer- ^ icans, in a better and more appealing position I2ythan the AHies. With this end in view Professor Miinsterberg sweeps aside all the reports about German " . brutality and German vandalism and concen- ■ trates his attention upon two main propositions : First, that Germany's preparations for the war were purely defensive; second, that Germany's defeat in the war would mean a devastating blow for "culture," and a disastrous set-back to the best interests of humanity. With regard to those acts of German vandalism which he sweeps out of his path. Professor Miinsterberg has only one word to say : "Is there any truth in all this? Yes; one truth, which is undeniable, which is sad, which is awful, namely, that war is Ji'ic^iaM? THE WAR AND CULTURE war." To this interesting acknowledgment that war is a game with no rules, Professor Miinster- berg adds the following charming example of airy and graceful humor: "When the big head-lines tell the reader again that the German soldiers slaughtered babies yesterday in the town which they captured, he will conjecture for himself that in reality they probably slaughtered some chickens for which they paid in full." In spite of his use of the term "war is war," as an answer to all critics of German war- methods, our Professor cannot resist the temp- tation to make certain "side-issue" appeals to proverbial American opinion. "The Americans," says he, "did not like Japan's mixing in on the side of England. This capturing of Germany's little colony in China by a sly trick, when Ger- many's hands were bound, had to awake sym- pathy in every American. But this was outdone by the latest move of the campaign which has brought Hindus from India and Turcos from Africa into hne against the German people. To force these colored races, which surely have not the slightest cause to fight the German nation, into battle against the Teutons, is an act which must have brought a feeling of shame for the Allies to every true American." How naive indeed must be the Professor's sense of American intelligence! Without the least disparagement to the attractive negro popu- lation in America, no one would for a moment think of comparing them to the children of the immemorial traditions of India. To introduce CAUSES OF THE WAR such a comparison at all with this invidious ex- pression, "colored races," is only to throw the shadow of special pleading across the whole of his argument. We shall hope to show, before we have concluded, how not only Indians and Arabs and Japanese, but every race in the world, of every shade of "color," have a very good reason, and a very substantial motive, for coming into battle against the Germans. It is a pity that in his preliminary clearing up of the issues before carrying the question into the higher court of world-interests, the professor should have found it necessary to score so many petty and superficial triumphs. It is a greater , pity that he should have permitted his patriotismif^ to overcome his sense of logic and to lead him into plain self-contradiction. But this is what happens. For instance, on page 43 we read : "It was the moral right of France to make use of any hour of German embarrassment for re- capturing its military glory by a victory of re- venge. And it was the moral right of England to exert its energies for keeping the control of the seas and for destroying the commercial rivalry of the Germans. No one is to be blamed." But on page 90 Professor Miinster- berg admits that he has "hurled many a re- proach against France and England." "I thought it," he there says, "inexcusable for them to use the advantage of the hour to join Russia in this fight. I regretted the revenge feeling of France /, and the ungenerous attitude of England towards its new rival in the world's markets." THE WAR AND CULTURE It is, of course, quite justifiable for a patriotic German, endeavoring to enlist the sympathies of America for his Fatherland, to make much of the fact that in this war Germany and Austria stand (with the ambiguous support of Turkey) alone against the world. This is an aspect of the matter in which one can well enter into a German's feelings and indeed sympathize with them. It is a splendid commentary upon the war-like power of Germany and her unequalled preparation for war that with these terrific odds against her she should still be hopeful of victory. But does it not occur to the professor that the mere fact of Germany having put herself, from the point of view of so many nations, completely in the wrong, is an argument against her claim of merely defensive preparations? "Securus judicat orbis terrarum," says the Catholic motto : and a race that has managed to bring down upon itself the dread, dislike, and suspicion of the whole civilized world ; a race that can claim as its ally no power, little or great, except the power of the Sublime Porte, can hardly be re- garded as sacrificing itself for the cause of civilization. Professor Miinsterberg attributes this strange alliance of the nations against his Fatherland to the Mephistophelean machinations of King Edward the Seventh ; but one finds it hard to believe that even that diplomatic monarch could so influence civilization, east and west, as to make it commit a complete moral suicide. "Securus judicat orbis terrarum." And if Ger- 8 CAUSES OF THE WAR many has roused against herself the dislike and suspicion of the world it is surely because the world instinctively feels that the triumph of Ger- man ambition would be disastrous and not bene- ficial to humanity at large. At the same time, putting Miinsterberg and his argument aside for the moment, who with any dramatic or human feeling can deny that the spectacle of this heroic struggle of one race for world-dominance, of one race against all the other races, is a spectacle calculated to arouse both wonder and admiration. Even admitting that the worst were true about the matter of German barbarities, and one prays that the worst is not true, it still remains a heroic struggle, and a struggle which, in the peculiar Hegelian senses is profoundly tragic. In one point in this bitter controversy we hold Professor Miinsterberg absolutely right. We hold him right, in fact, against some of the most authoritative opinion both in England and in America. I mean in the matter of the Kaiser. Much has been said about the Kaiser in relation to this war that seems more than irrelevant. With regard to the ruler of a nation, it is surely from the nation itself, rather than from out- siders, that one must look for enlightening opin- ion. Let us judge the Kaiser from the German point of view as we should judge the Tsar from the Russian point of view, or the President of the United States from the point of view of Americans. No nation has a right to impose/ upon another its peculiar and especial politicaf THE WAR AND CULTURE system. No nation has a right to assume that it has the poHtical system which is the best for the world at large. For ourselves we hold that the political system of the future is neither that of Germany nor of the United States ; not even that of our own democratic England. Our view is that the political system of the future will be based upon certain vast economic changes, which at present are only, so to speak, "in the air." When they come it will no longer be a question as to whether the Anglo-Saxon parliamentary polity or the Russian "religious" polity is to dominate the world. It will indeed be no longer a war between nations. It will be a war between international capital and international labor. It will be a war under what Professor Miinster- berg quaintly but not unhappily calls a state of "cosmochorism." We are not inclined to make, either Edward the Seventh, as Miinsterberg does, or the Kaiser, as so many English and Americans do, responsible ^^for this war. The responsibility for this war rests ultimately upon the nations themselves who are engaged in it; or rather, let us say, it rests upon those profound underlying evolutionary movements, which, with volcanic force, overturn the cleverest diplomacy. As Professor Munster- berg says, though he retracts it almost immedi- ately afterwards, "No one is to blame." In this devil's war the responsible powers, if we may say so without blasphemy, are the gods them- selves. In other words the thing was inevitable. Fate pushed them on — Germans, Russians, 10 CAUSES OF THE WAR French, English, and the rest — and breath used in disputes about responsibility is breath wasted. The question, of course, remains : Who were the articulate mouthpieces of this fate, of this in- evitable catastrophe? And here we are com- pelled to differ completely from Professor Miinsterberg; and not only so but to find him a little disingenuous and obscurantist in his line of argument. Professor Miinsterberg is doubtless right when he speaks of the Kaiser as the symbol of the German people, as the expression of the unity and purpose, of the courage and defiance, of the German race. In these things, where it is a question between Government and People, out- siders had better leave it to the nation itself to decide. It is no doubt sad for a Socialist to have to admit it, but considering the answer of German Socialism to Jaure's proposal of an international strike, there seems no other alternative than to subscribe to Professor Munsterberg's words: "Who are the people whom Mr. Ehot wishes to save from the ruthlessness of the Emperor, if not the Social Democrats and the two million volunteers? The Emperor acted as their agent. No President of a republic could have been more the spokesman of a nation." According, then, to the German view, according to the view of Miinsterberg and his friends, the German people and the German Emperor must settle the "re- sponsibility" between them. One would wish to keep the German Socialists out of this patriotic 11 THE WAR AND CULTURE understanding. History may perhaps be able to make this desirable distinction. Certainly the reported suppression of the BerHn Socialist newspaper supports such a view. On the other hand one knows the fatal force of "patriotism" — the fatal force of that human fear of being thought "afraid" which drives so many into the field. But whether or not the Kaiser speaks for the German Socialists, Professor Miinsterberg is surely right when he says that he represents the average man of German public opinion. It, however, still remains true that the pro- fessor's argument is a disingenuous one. It is disingenuous in his complete omission — a surely very significant omission — of any reference to Treitschke or to Bernhardi. I am quite prepared to agree that the military clique in Germany is not alone responsible for this war. No mere clique, no mere war party, could ever succeed in rousing the spirit of a nation as the German nation has been aroused. But this matter of great popular German writers is quite another thing. I am afraid it is only too obvious why Professor Miinsterberg makes no mention of these ! After reading these, it is not very easy to maintain our belief in the purely pacific inten- tions of a Germany, untouched by world- ambitions ! "Germany's pacific and industrious population had only one wish : to develop its agricultural and industrial, its cultural and moral resources. It had no desire to expand its frontiers over a new square foot of land in Europe. The neigh- 12 CAUSES OF THE WAR bors begrudged this prosperity of the Fatherland which had been weak and poor and through centuries satisfied with songs and thoughts and dreams. They threatened and threatened by ever increasing armaments." So writes Pro- fessor Miinsterberg ; but unfortunately it has not been Professor Miinsterberg, but much more daring and adventurous geniuses, who have been the mouthpieces of the working of fate in the matter of German public opinion. The great Treitschke, a really national historian, and one of enormous genius and power — a man in every re- spect much more remarkable than Miinsterberg's Euckens and Harnacks — devoted his whole life to inspiring the German people with his ideal of offensive war, for the sake of world-domination. Bernhardi, whose book has done so much to popularize these views, quotes Treitschke on every page. I will at present content myself with quoting Bernhardi. "It may be," says he, "that a growing people cannot win colonies from uncivilized races, and yet the state wishes to retain the surplus population which the mother country can no longer feed. Then the only course left is to acquire the necessary territory by war. Thus the instinct of self-preservation leads inevitably to war and the conquest of for- eign soil. It is not the possessor but the victor who then has the right. The procedure of Italy in Tripoli furnishes an example of such condi- tions, while Germany in the Morocco question could not rouse herself to a similar resolution. In such cases might gives the right to occupy or 13 THE WAR AND CULTURE to conquer. Might is at once the supreme right and the dispute as to what is right is decided by the arbitrement of war. War gives a biologically just decision, since its decisions rest on the very nature of things." Thus we find Bernhardi setting forth the •"darwinian, or, if you will, the Nietzschean, doc- trine, of the necessary "struggle of existence," and the necessary "survival of the fittest." Many persons in England and America are bound by their principles, if not by their prac- tise, to regard such plain words as pure Machia- vellian cynicism ; and such perhaps they are : but the fact remains that in a sense they are true. In a deeper and more extended sense it may turn out that they are untrue. It may turn out that what Bernhardi calls the "nature of things," — in other words, the life-spirit — demands something more from its successful votaries than mere strength and cunning, if they are ultimately to triumph. But whether true or false this Nietzsche- Treitschke-Bernhardi doctrine of the rights of biological superiority is a doctrine with a logical enough basis and a formidable enough energy to be of considerable philosophic weight. And it is by this doctrine, for after all every German is a philosopher, much more than by the bullying of a military caste, that the people of the Father- land have been converted to the idea of a war for world-domination. Beginning with the Franco-Prussian war, and the policies of Bismarck, the German people have 14 CAUSES OF THE WAR been preparing themselves with amazing industry and science for this terrific biological struggle against all rivals. Nor is it easy, though I do not regard it as impossible, to prove that such a theory, in defense of preparation for de- liberately offensive war, is unphilosophical or fantastic. At any rate this is the philosophy — these are the philosophers — upon which the mind of young Germany has been moulded. Now, it is in our opinion disingenuous of Professor Miinsterberg and unworthy of his psychological insight that he should have suppressed all men- tion of these great names. Fancy a German writ- ing about German moral values and German culture and not even so much as referring to Frederick Nietzsche! What are we to think of this? Professor Miinsterberg must have dis- covered in his well-earned holidays in his native land that it is not to Eucken and Harnack, but to Treitschke and Bernhardi that the hearts of his young countrymen have turned. The speeches of the Kaiser are much more in harmony with the doctrines of Treitschke than with the doctrines of Eucken. And Professor Miinsterberg admits that behind the Kaiser is the German people. The professor does indeed speak in one place of "a few pensioned naval officers and retired colonels who gloriously out-Hearst the Hearst editorials — but nobody takes them seriously, and to identify the govern- ment with such hashish-dreamers is pre- posterous." In the next sentence the same 15 THE WAR AND CULTURE (y^ group of thinkers are styled "courageous clowns." Now, to call the great historian and patriot, Treitschke, a "hashish dreamer" or a "cour- ageous clown" is what one might expect from an Anglo-Saxon lecturer. From such lips as his the phrase would have an intelligible mean- ing. It would also doubtless have — and prob- ably has had — its psychological value, as a moral weapon, in the hands of an Anglo-Saxon statesman. But from a German — from a Ger- man as patriotic as Professor Miinsterberg — the words are curiously unconvincing. If he really believes in their truth, if he really thinks • that the good Eucken and the latitudinarian Harnack — arch-types of that "Philistine-Cul- . ture" which the great Nietzsche reprobates — are to be regarded as nearer the spirit of modern Germany than these more daring ones, one can only say that his association with cer- tain rhetorical aspects of Anglo-Saxon life have spoiled the innocence of his mind. Or does he only do it, does he only suppress Nietzsche and celebrate Eucken, because he knows that the one is a persona grata, and the other a bete noir, in this particular country? If so I am afraid that one must accuse the pro- fessor of catering most unworthily to public opinion. The present writer is perfectly aware that the line he is taking, in many portions of this pamphlet, is a line contrary to much of ""^ American thought ; yet he may modestly claim \^ that he knows the American people better than 16 CAUSES OF THE WAR Professor Miinsterberg, if Professor Miinster- berg fancies he can gull them by over-empha- sized agreement. The professor does indeed go so far as to claim that it is largely owing to his eloquence on their behalf that the American people have been "better understood" in Berlin of late. The present writer submits that the American people are quite well able to take care of themselves, and do not by any means require a professorial introduction to the Fatherland of modern efficiency. It must indeed strike the American sense of humor as extremely funny when one after an- other of the warring nations of the old world comes gently forward to beg for America's moral support. Still more funny must it appear when the spokesmen of these nations naively try to appeal to American prejudices, with such references as the one, for instance, which we have already noted, about dragging in the "colored races." Poor Professor Miinsterberg! He had always praised, he tells us, the Ameri- can "fairness," as one of America's profoundest qualities — and now — he is at a loss what to say ! He is especially troubled over the fact that, for once, public opinion in the United States and public opinion in Japan should be running in the same direction. What a monstrous asso- ciation is this ! Does it not occur to him that a nation which has roused against itself such an orbis terrarum of universal distrust, as must be implied in such an agreement, is prob- ably not on the side of the "nature of things"? 2 17 THE WAR AND CULTURE It almost seems as though the art of hypocrisy, j which, they say, is "the toll vice pays to virtue," "jK was never less present than in recent German history. Germany has, in a manner almost pathetically naive and open, made it perfectly clear what she was seeking. It is a pity that she was not able to use Professor Miinsterberg's genius for psychology in the field of high diplomacy. The truth is that the German soul is much more simple and childlike than the soul of Frenchmen or Russians or English, and this simplicity of soul has never been more clearly proved than in the way in which through both her leaders and her thinkers she has made clear to the world what she aimed at. She has accepted MachiavelHan principles, without ac- quiring the Machiavellian subtlety ; and, if she falls, this blunder will be one of the reasons of it. It is no doubt with this un-Machiavellian confession of Machiavellian motives that Pro- fessor Miinsterberg is secretly indignant. Hence his desire to suppress any mention of the "clownish hashish-dreamers" who have moulded modern German thought. No doubt Professor Miinsterberg is perfectly justified in sweeping aside as irrelevant all the useless disputes that have lately been banded about as to the immediate cause of the war. Professor Miinsterberg himself finds the cause of the war in the inevitable desire for expansion !^^ of the Russian nation. We are quite ready to subscribe to this if he will add to it, as of equal 18 CAUSES OF THE WAR importance, the inevitable desire for expansion of the German nation. Indeed, truth compels us to go yet further and add the inevitable desire, to resist this latter expansion, of the English and the French nation. Lastly, let it once more be said, in the professor's own no- table phrase, "no one is to be blamed." 19 CHAPTER 11. A WAR OF IDEAS. Although, as we have seen, the underlying cause of this war is the expansion of the Teu- tonic and Slavonic peoples, yet the war having once started, the very nature and character of these two opposing races and of their allies, creates a desperate conflict of ideas, following upon the conflict of armed force, and reacting upon it. It is this conflict of ideas which will tend more and more to give the war its historic character, and in the final issue to outline and determine the readjustments of power and terri- tory. A colossal world-war of this kind, when once started upon its catastrophic career, rouses and unloosens, with volcano-like violence, all sorts of hidden spiritual forces ; which, in their turn, react upon it and direct it. The appeal which both sides keep so fiercely making to what Bernhardi, in his philosophical language, calls the "nature of things," and what most Ameri- cans would prefer to call "the will of God," is an appeal which proves how profound and in- vincible is the awakening of such hidden forces. What is the nature of the universe, in so far as the Issues of this war are concerned? What is the will of the invisible powers? This is indeed the very question that both sides are seeking to 20 A WAR OF IDEAS solve by the clash of arms and by the clash of ideas. Nothing is more interesting than to observe how, as this cataclysmic avalanche sweeps for- ward, the logic of the ideas involved becomes more and more clearly outlined. There is in- deed a certain living and creative energy in such ideas, which, as the struggle advances, leads to more extreme distinctions, and more formid- able divergence. Each new nation that enters the struggle on the side of the Allies will find itself swept irresistibly into the logic of the ideas the Allies stand for; and each new nation, if there are to be any, which enters the strug- gle on the side of Germany, will necessarily subscribe to the idea of the Germans. Human nature being what it is, and human conscious- ness being what it is, it is impossible that this should not be the case. There is a logical evolu- tion of feeling, as well as a logical evolution of reason, and both of these tend to be more and more definitely defined under the stress of the articulate idea which gives them form. And what are these opposing ideas, and what their dififerences? It is not difficult to define them, even at this point; and, as the struggle goes on, the logic of their opposition will be- come yet more apparent. We may assume, without question, as a fundamental axiom, applying as much to nations as to individuals, that the "will to power," the will to expand, the will to develop, the will to assert personality, lies at the bottom of every conflict of races. It 21 THE WAR AND CULTURE is the push and impulse of that primordial race- egoism under the stress of which so many world-movements have taken place. But though we must allow the presence of this will to power, both in the nations, which, like England and France, seem almost to have expanded to their limit, and those which, like Russia and Germany, are still in the process of expansion; yet the shape and form which this egoism takes is bound to become more and more different. The German egoism expresses itself in the Ger- man "Idea"; and the egoism of the Allies ex- presses itself in the AUies' "Idea." What we have to attempt to do is to define these opposed "ideas" and to indicate their difference. It is only in this way, and not by joining in the irrelevant discussion over "White Books" and "Orange Books," that the American people — or at least those among them not already com- mitted by race ties — will be enabled to give their final verdict. The German "Idea" is not difficult to indicate. We have had it defined for us in writers who are learned and philo- sophical, in writers who are passionate and popular, in ordinary German conversation, in the speeches of German authorities, and in the recent history of German diplomacy. I am afraid, in the light of all these, one must regard Professor MiJnsterberg's account of the German "Idea," as rather a piece of special pleading, addressed to the American people, than as a philosophic analysis. "Germany's pacific and industrious population had only one wish: to 21 A WAR OF IDEAS develop its agricultural and industrial, its cul- tural and moral resources." According to this view, a view which must have for its economic and political possibility, one of two requisites — the possession of vast areas of uncultivated land or an equilibrium in the growth of population — the "Idea" of the German race is not different from the "Idea" of that portion of the American people who view with dislike and suspicion any growth of imperialistic principles. But the economic and political requisites for this idea, of pure indus- trial and cultural development, are absent in Germany. In Germany the population increases with amazing rapidity, and the available amount of uncultivated land, suitable for the normal needs of a white race, remains limited and in- sufficient. It has been remarked by a great English publicist that Germany's demand for colonies is an absurd demand because she has not developed properly the colonies she pos- sesses. The answer to this is, that the colonies she possesses cannot compare, in their adapt- ability to the needs of a white race, with those already in the possession of the enemies of Germany. No; the "Idea" represented by the German people, the "Idea" for which the Ger- man people have struggled for forty years, the "Idea" to which the German people have been converted by the direct reaction of their most popular thinkers upon the fundamental attri- butes of the German character, is not that of pure industrial development. It is more signifi- 2Z THE WAR AND CULTURE cant than that, more formidable than that. It is indeed nothing less than the organization of the German race into one terrific, defensive and offensive machine; a machine which may be used — nay ! by the implication of its very exist- ence, must be used — for the spread of German culture all over the world, and the increase of German power wherever it is possible. The German "Idea" is therefore the Idea of the primary importance of the State. Accord- ing to it, the State and its welfare must not only override all other interests, but absorb and transmute all other interests. Against the State no individual has either rights or claims ; and to increase the power and efficiency of the State every means is lawful. The State becomes, therefore, what it was in the Greek city of Lacedaemon, a living and formidable organism, a terrific and irrisistible machine, guided by one will, driven by one intention, without scruple and without remorse, prepared to sacrifice to itself every alien exigency, regarding nothing as sacred beyond it or above it or beneath it, per- mitting nothing to share its worship, nothing to intercept the sacrifices it demands. "The morality of the State," says Bernhardi, "must be judged by the nature and raison d'etre of the State, and not of the individual citizen. But the end-all and be-all of a State is power, and he who" — here he quotes the great Treit- schke — "is not man enough to look this truth in the face should not meddle in politics. Machia- velli was the first to declare that the keynote 24 A WAR OF IDEAS of every policy was the advancement of power. This term, however, has acquired since the Ger- man Reformation, a meaning other than that of the shrewd Florentine. To him power was de- sirable in itself ; for us the State" — here he quotes Treitschke again — "is not physical power as an end in itself, it is power to protect and promote the higher interests — power that must justify itself by being applied for the greatest good of mankind." We must not allow our- selves to be misled by the phrase, "the greatest good of mankind," into assuming that the Ger- man "Idea" hesitates for one moment as to where "the greatest good of mankind" lies. It lies, obviously and necessarily, in the vigorous spreading of German culture, German methods, German efficiency, German science, German obedience and docility, wherever it is possible for German arms to spread them. "The Chris- tian idea of sacrifice for something higher does not," our authority goes on, "exist for the State — for there is nothing higher than it in the world's history ; consequently it cannot sacrifice itself to something higher." It is important to do full justice to this great and formidable Idea — this Idea which is at the back of Germany's heroic fight against the world. The State-Machine is the god of the German idolatry; but the State-Machine, to which all other interests must be sacrificed, and than which there is nothing higher in the world, is to be constantly associated with spiritual and cultural aims. These spiritual and cultural 25 THE WAR AND CULTURE aims, not themselves higher than the State, for nothing can be that, but implicit in the Idea of this particular State, because it is the State of the cultured German people, will, and must, naturally be pursued as the State increases its power. "Accordingly it is the duty of the State to remain loyal to its own pecuhar function as guardian and promoter of all higher interests. This duty it cannot fulfil unless it possesses the needful power. The increase of this power is thus from this standpoint also the first and fore- most duty of the State. This aspect of the question supplies a fair standard by which the morality of the actions of the State can be esti- mated. The crucial question is, how far has the State performed this duty, and thus served the interests of the community? And this not merely in the material sense, but in the higher meaning that material interests are justifiable only so far as they promote the power of the State and thus indirectly its higher aims." We are thus enabled clearly to understand what the "Idea" is for which the Germans are fighting, and fighting so heroically, in this war. They are fighting for the increase of the power of their State, an increase of power which does not only imply the world-domination of German material interests, but the world-domination of German efficiency and German culture ; in a word, of the German spirit. The remarkable thing is, that this inspiring and formidable Idea, of a State-Machine, higher than the interests of which there is nothing in heaven or earth, is an 26 A WAR OF IDEAS idea which has brought under its spell every element in the German race. Even Professor Miinsterberg's "Harnacks and Euckens and Haeckels" have succumbed to it; and the Social Democrats have given it their enthusiastic ad- hesion. Looking round the modern world to seek analogies for this German Idea in foreign nations Bernhardi rejoices to discover it in the spirit of modern Japan. It will be interesting to see in the future how far the contact between Japan and her western allies, how far, in fact, the logic of the situation, in regard to this war of Ideas, changes and modifies this Japanese spirit which Bernhardi finds so analogous to the German one. In Russia, however, he finds a different mood. "In Russia, on the contrary, the idea was preached and disseminated that 'Patriotism was an obsolete notion,' 'war was a crime and an anachronism,' that 'warlike deeds deserved no notice,' 'the army was the greatest bar to progress, and military service a dis- honorable trade.' " Now, without agreeing with this view, a view which the events of the pres- ent war and the present attitude of the "intel- lectuals" in Russia renders absurd enough, we may at least observe that it emphasizes the enormous gulf that exists between the "Idea" of Russia and the "Idea" of the German nation. Of Russian feeling in regard to the Japanese War what Bernhardi says is undoubtedly true. The "intellectuals" were opposed to it and the revolu- tionaries rebelled against it. In this war. how- ever, everything is different. The Russian people 27 THE WAR AND CULTURE are now behind the Russian government as they have never been behind it ; and they are behind it for a sufficient reason. They are behind it be- cause they see, because every NihiHst and every Moujik in Russia sees, that what is at stake is the hberty of the Russian soul itself. The ex- pansion and liberty to expand of the Russian people, of the whole Slavonic race, is menaced, and menaced directly by Germany. The Idea of Russia, the soul of Russia, the psychological character of Russia, all these are profoundly and desperately opposed to German methods. The Idea of Germany, the German State-Ma- chine, the German Bureaucracy, the German philosophical militarism, are all alien and hostile to the spirit of Russia. The mere changing of the name Petersburg to Petrograd is an indication of this. And al- though there is no doubt that the autocratic circle at Petersburg was formerly strengthened and supported by their fellow-autocrats in Ber- lin, this association has now ended. A freer, more organic, more spontaneous, more popular spirit is already being manifested in the Rus- sian Government. Old Petersburg drew sup- port for its sinister police system from the sinister police systems of Germany and Austria. New Petrograd will have a diflferent police system. The logic of the opposition of Ideas, in this war of Ideas, will sweep Russia further and further away from Germany, nearer and nearer to France and England. One has only to com- 28 A WAR OF IDEAS pare the recent utterances of the Kaiser with those of the Tsar to see the essential differences between the Ideas of the two races. The Kaiser appeals to the Lord in the familiar tone of one referring to a region of spiritual force, which must inevitably assist the German State, while the German State has the power to assist itself. The Tsar appeals to the Lord as the High Priest of a mystical nation might appeal, with awe and enthusiasm, to the invisible and tre- mendous world-spirit, which is above all States, and can carry out its will by means of many or of few, of weakness or of strength. I said the logic of Ideas would sweep Russia nearer France and England. This will probably be true as far as the political autocracy of Russia and the police system of Russia are concerned. In the deeper things of the spirit, however, in those things where Russia is most different from Germany, it will be towards Russia, and the soul of Russia, that England and France will be led. In these deeper aspects of that complex Idea, for which the Allies are fighting, against the more simple Idea of Germany, it will be Russia rather than England or France that will strike the dominant note. Professor Miinsterberg recognizes this, and regrets it ; endeavors, indeed, to make out of it an eloquent appeal to America, whose ideas, he explains, are rather German than Russian, to help in with- standing it. The present writer does not regret it. He rejoices in it. He holds the view that, from the 29 THE WAR AND CULTURE standpoint of the larger interests of civiliza- tion, it is not good that the ideals of the Anglo- Saxon and the Teuton, different indeed from one another but both differing from the Rus- sian, should dominate the world to the exclusion of the Russian ideals. The present writer would welcome the defeat of the Teutonic ideal, and a closer fusion of the ideals of England and Russia. From all this it will be seen how much more complex the Idea of the Allies must necessarily be than the Idea of the Germans. The Idea of the Germans is the Idea of one race, set resolutely upon forcing it on the rest of the world by means of military and scientific efficiency and by means of the State-Machine. The Idea of the Allies is compounded of many elements, each race among them furnishing its own, and only the common opposition to Ger- many, and the accumulative pressure of the logic of the situation, having the power to fuse these variables into one inspirational whole. The triumph of Germany, for instance, over France would mean a disastrous blow to Latin civilization : and, in the present writer's opinion, between German civilization and Latin civiliza- tion, as far as the future of humanity is con- cerned, there can only be one choice — Latin civilization is classical civilization. The great- est writers among the Germans themselves have always recognized this. Goethe and Schopen- hauer, Heine and Nietzsche, all looked to France, rather than to the Fatherland, as the spiritual hope of humanity; as the country of 30 A WAR OF IDEAS true distinction and true culture. To France and to Italy ! And what would become of France and Italy if Germany and Austria con- quered in this war? The very character and inherent implication of the German Idea — this Idea of an efficient State-Machine forcing its "higher interests" upon humanity — suggests what would happen. Looking at this whole struggle from a completely outside point of view, from what one might call a planetary point of view, it would surely be obvious that the future of human culture were more assured in the possession of an alliance between Sla- vonic and Latin and Anglo-Saxon traditions than in the predominance of one tradition alone, the tradition and Idea of the Teutonic race? England with her great Sea-Empire and Russia with her great Land-Empire come forward, in this struggle, as the guardians and protectors of that classical Latin tradition the loss of which, or any serious blow to which, would be more detrimental to the world, as a felicitous and gracious place to live in, than anything which could possibly happen. Whatever happens, this great Latin tradition must be protected and de- fended ; for, as long as it lasts, no purely "efficient" and "mechanical" ideal can override the beauty and dignity and grace of life. We are, by degrees, it will be seen, formulat- ing and analyzing the real content of this com- plex "Idea" of the Allies, which, in this world- war, is struggling to defeat the simpler "Idea" of the Germans. Let us see how much further 31 THE WAR AND CULTURE we can go. It is surely unnecessary, for the purposes of arguing with an American pubUc, to emphasize to any great extent what England and the Anglo-Saxon race stand for. The pres- ent writer, however, is not disinclined to sym- pathize with those Americans who disdain this perpetual looking across to England; those Americans who feel that after the great tides of immigration are over, America, in a wonderful fusion of all her children, will represent a com- pletely new ideal, not necessarily more English than it is Russian, say, or French, or even Ger- man. But this hope of the future, this wonder- ful Utopian blending of the old races into a great new race, has hardly yet begun to mani- fest itself. It will manifest itself. No one can doubt that. New economic conditions, new political and climatic conditions ; nay ! and the much more subtle psychological atmosphere of the New World, are bound ultimately to produce it. The interesting question emerges : what, when it is produced, will be its character? Will it, when it is produced, have an ideal more in sympathy with the present complex ideal of the Allies, or more in sympathy with the present simple ideal of the Germans? This is a ques- tion very difficult to answer at this moment, and certainly one that cannot be answered either by Professor Miinsterberg, with his definitely German attitude, or by Mr. Eliot, with his definitely Anglo-Saxon one. To answer it one would have to discover the opinion of the most evasive persons in the United States, the per- 32 A WAR OF IDEAS sons who are neither Pro-German, Pro-Slav, neither Pro-English nor Pro-Irish — the opinion, in fact, of the real American. The mention of the Irish race compels one to pause for a moment and consider the result of the victory of the Allies in so far as it affects the oppressed nationalities. Three races have especially suffered in the past from the tyranny of Russia and England. The Poles and the Jews from that of the former ; the Irish from that of the latter. Some Americans might be tempted to ask, what have the Celts to gain from the victory of the Allies? Now it is quite clear that if the Celts, whether Irish or other- wise, have any moral and spiritual affinity at all, it is with France. The French themselves have Celtic blood, and history has created, ever since the Stuart times, a hundred links of sym- pathy between France and Ireland. The Celtic race has always been one of the quickest and most sensitive, among European races, to under- stand the spirit of the Latin tradition, its dignity and its charm. It is inconceivable and unthink- able that the peculiar poetry and imagination of the Celtic temper should have anything to gain from the triumph of Germany. On the con- trary, no race in the world would experience more spiritual suffering, or a deeper intellectual and moral outrage, from such a triumph, than would the Celtic race. To the Celt the Philis- tinism and vulgarity of the Anglo-Saxon is bad enough. Against these things he has always rebelled. Against these things he is rebelling 3 33 THE WAR AND CULTURE still. But what of the arrogant efficiency of the Germans? What of this German State-Ma- chine, overriding so roughly the margins of life, drilling and organizing so drastically? Free the Celt from the dominance of the Saxon, by all means. But to free him from that, only to plunge him beneath the iron heel of Teutonic efficiency, is to offer him Hell in place of Purga- tory. As a matter of fact, the logic of the situation, the logic of the great complex Idea for which the Allies are fighting, will do more to free Ireland from Saxon domination than the struggle of two centuries has done. It is not for nothing that the first month of the war was hardly over before a Home Rule Bill wrote it- self upon the statute book. Ulster, a little nation within a little nation, will no doubt re- ceive her rights — it is in accordance with the Idea of this war that she should receive them — but they will not be at the expense of Celtic Ireland. And Poland? If this war of Ideas has no other result than to liberate and re-establish the Polish nation it will not be a war wasted. The partition of Poland was one of the greatest crimes of history. It is a crime that is being paid for now. It remains to be seen whether Russia will keep her present word, and whether the Polish nation shall really rise out of the dust. It is the opinion of the present writer that Russia will keep her word, carried forward, she also, by the organic power of the great Idea for which she fights. And if Russia 34 A WAR OF IDEAS keeps her word to the Poles, what right have we to assume that she will break it to the Jews ? The Jews have indeed come forward, with especial prominence, both in Russia and Eng- land in support of this war. And they will have their reward. Indeed the mere fact that the majority of the Jewish race all over the world is so strongly against them should make the Germans pause and think. The Jews have al- ways been a sort of intellectual weather-vane, a kind of psychic barometer, of the spiritual forces of European civilization. They have need to be. It is their instinct of self-preserva- tion that makes them so. And now if the Jews of Russia answer so heroically to the call of their compatriots it is because a deep instinct tells them that, in so doing, they will win their law- ful place in the country of their birth. After this war there will be no more Pogroms ! We are gradually, it will be seen, approach- ing a position from which it will be possible to define the complex Idea for which the Allies are fighting. I am not at present going to speak of this matter from its negative side. I mean from the side from which the Idea of the Allies appears merely as fierce opposition to the Idea of the Germans. That point we will discuss later, when we come to analyze this modern German culture, of which Professor Miinster- berg has so much to say. Let us only remark here that there must be something not only in the content of this culture, but in the form of its presentment, peculiarly irritating to the sensibility 35 THE WAR AND CULTURE of the world at large, otherwise there would scarcely have arisen this furious and angry out- burst against it. Culture may be, as the great cosmopolitan, and not particularly Pro-German, Goethe, held it was, a thing completely outside the passions and race-instincts of nations; or it may be, as Nietzsche seems to have regarded it, a thing of European value, as opposed to the mysticism of the East; or, finally, it may be, as the Russian, Dostoievsky, or the Frenchman, Maurice Barres, consider it, a thing essentially idiomatic and racial, a thing springing out of a certain soil and linked to a certain tradition ; our point at present is, that whatever the content of modern German culture may be to- day, there must be something unlovely, some- thing ungracious, something contrary to the urbane and tactful spirit of all true humanism, about the manner of its presentation ; else the world would not have rebelled so savagely against it. Did the German race possess any- thing, in their boasted modern culture, approxi- mating to what Matthew Arnold calls "sweet reasonableness," the German race would not find itself with so many enemies today. These things, some of my readers may say, are little things and of small importance. On the con- trary, it is from these little things that true culture in the long run will be judged. Professor Miinsterberg is astonished at the outburst of dislike for the German race which this war has produced all over the world. He vaguely thinks that it has something to do with 36 A WAR OF IDEAS reports of German barbarity, with the fright- fulness of what, as he puts it, war always must be. The professor, we think, is mistaken in this explanation. Much indeed has been made of these reports; but behind all reports, true or false, behind the whole melancholy discussion, lies the fact that there is something in the manner of the German presentation of its "cul- ture" which irritates the natural human soul, whether cultivated or not, over the entire world. Is it only, for instance, because that mysterious country lies so near the Indian Empire that the Grand Llama of Tibet is now praying for the success of the AUies? Is it only because King George the Fifth visited Delhi that half the princes of India are coming forward with their treasure and their lives? Is it only because the Tsar of Russia cried aloud to the god of the Slavonic race from the temple-steps of Mos- cow that the chief of the Nihilists in Paris is making his way home — with no promises from the police? Professor Munsterberg is perfectly justified in calling to our attention the astonishing hero- ism of the German and Austrian people in thus challenging the whole world. To disparage this heroism would be at once cowardly and absurd. The great Teutonic race is now showing itself, whether in victory or defeat, worthy and more than worthy of its formidable ancestors who broke the power of ancient Rome. Much that is written and spoken in England and America today does insufficient justice to this tre- 37 'MaOHV THE WAR AND CULTURE mendous heroism, to this Titanic effort to Ger- manize the world against incredible odds. The present writer finds it difficult to follow the elo- quent reasoning of so many great Anglo-Saxon publicists, who tell us that the German people are now, as it were, like driven sheep ; forced into battle against their will by a designing gov- ernment. That the majority of the German people hold the view that in this particular war they are the attacked and not the aggressors is no doubt perfectly true. But at the same time we feel equally confident that the majority of the German people are convinced in their hearts, or were convinced before the war began, that the destiny of the German State, of the Ger- man system, and the German culture is nothing more or less than the domination of Europe. It is natural enough that in Germany, as in Eng- land, the thoughts of the ordinary person should turn rather to the immediate and superficial causes of the war than to those that lie deeper. To the ordinary German, one may suppose, the immediate cause of the war would present it- self as the jealousy of England, the revenge of France, and the diabolical machinations of ' Russia. One of the curious psychological results of the breaking out of the war-spirit seems to be a tendency on the part of all concerned to justify their country's action on any sort or kind of moral ground. Germany, it appears, in spite of her philosophic culture, is just as liable to this psychological tendency as any of her 38 A WAR OF IDEAS enemies. Indeed, the only country which, in this dramatic situation, has completely preserved her analytic coolness of head is France. But that is, after all, what one would have expected. The French intellect is the least addicted to self- deception of all the intellects of Europe. But we are digressing from our present theme, which is the real nature of the world- wide "Idea" which binds the Allies together against these infatuated and heroic Teutons. This Idea presents itself in the first place as the Idea of the rights of individuals against the State-Machine. It was no doubt quite as easy for the Paris anarchists, the Russian Nihilists, and the English radicals, to join enthusiastically in the war as for the German Socialists. For, whereas one can conceive the German Socialists finding something not altogether uncongenial in the doctrine of an omnipotent State-Machine, one can clearly see that all individualistic thinkers must tend towards the cause of the Allies. The idea of the rights of the individual, of the rights of humanity, as against the dominance of the State is an idea which brings closely to- gether both French and English tradition. It is indeed nothing more or less than the idea of the French Revolution. It is also the older idea embodied in the English Magna Charta and in the American Declaration of Independ- ence. This is that great and divine idea of liberty, larger and more human than the special traditions of any particular race, that idea for 39 THE WAR AND CULTURE the sake of which Germany herself withstood Napoleon, and Italy shook off the yoke of Austria. This is an idea which in spite of the War of Liberation Germany has been singu- larly slow to learn. It has never been popular in Prussia. Bismarck scouted it. And the in- fluence of Prussia and Bismarck upon Germany may be commended to Professor Miinsterberg as worthy a psychological chapter in itself. The great German poet Heine, who called himself "a soldier in the cause of the Liberation of Humanity," and who knew Germany at least as well as Professor Munsterberg, said once, that while the Englishman loved liberty as his lawful wife, and the Frenchman as his loving mistress, Germany loved her as an old grand- mother, consigned to a remote place in the kitchen, never quite forgotten, but not brought forward very prominently into the light! The idea of the rights of the individual against the State-Machine naturally brings with it, as a logical corollary, the idea of the rights of small nations and oppressed races against the great empires. Here, no doubt, France putting aside the Grand Monarch and Napoleon, has a clearer record than either England or Russia. But since, by a kind of special providence, or, to speak more plainly, by reason of their own courage, Servia and Belgium have played so large a part in this war, and in so doing have called the world's attention to the importance of the little nations, it seems inevitable that the logic of the situation will force upon both the 40 A WAR OF IDEAS great empires a more gentle and considerate treatment of the races under their protection. England has already in a measure learned this lesson; and learned it by bitter experience. Russia will learn it also. In this way the world will come to owe an immense debt to both Servia and Belgium. For it is the heroism of Servia and Belgium, in relation to this war, that is already widening the Anglo-French idea of the value of liberty, and making it a racial as well as a political idea. Nor will it be only a question of the little nations. One very important aspect of the Idea for which the Allies are found to be fighting is the principle of race-boundaries as distinct from artificial ones. Austria-Hungary is of all the European nations the one which has trans- gressed this principle the most flagrantly, though the grand historic example of the abominable breaking up of natural boundaries is, of course, Poland. It seems more and more clear that one of the greatest results of this war if the Allies win will be a drastic change of the map in accordance with natural and racial boundaries. If this really occurs it will be a sufficient answer to those who speak of uselessness, insanity, and ruin. It is not for anyone, least of all for argu- mentative philosophers, far from the front, to deny the atrocious waste and tragic miseries of war; but it must be made clear that this waste and this misery must be turned to good issues for the benefit of the world. This the Allies must see to ; this the Allies must be driven to, 41 THE WAR AND CULTURE by every possible exertion of the public opinion of the non-combatant nations. Fortunately when once Ideas become battle- cries, the logic of events carries the issues far. It is possible that more good than any one yet guesses will emerge out of this hell. It must be made to emerge. The neutral nations will have to bend their influence to nothing less. And how good it will be indeed for the world if the Idea for which the AUies are fighting becomes, as it seems likely to become, more and more in- volved with the destiny of the smaller nations and races ! A great question is at stake here, a question concerned with the very nature and implication of culture ; and it does not look as though this question were going to be decided according to the view of Professor Miinster- berg. Is culture a purely impersonal, anti-racial, un- traditional thing — or is it bound up indissolubly with local and national characteristics? Certain very great men have taken the former view ; but the latter is surely the one that ap- peals most to the natural instincts of humanity. Culture is too personal, too full of local color, too dramatic, too organic and spontaneous, to lend itself, with good results, to the deracinating process of inter-nationalism. All the great epochs of art, of literature, of music, have been epochs when the racial spirit, very often the racial spirit of quite a small nation, has asserted itself and found an articu- late, idiomatic voice. Cosmopolitan art, cosmo- 42 A WAR OF IDEAS politan literature, cosmopolitan music, are al- ways forced and artificial, and often trivial and thin, compared with the art, literature, and music which springs from a race's unique soul. That is the worst of these great modern em- pires, from an aesthetic point of view. How the new German Empire, if it were triumphant, would go to work to force "German culture" upon the world we can easily imagine. It is perfectly true that modern German culture is more cosmopolitan than that of any country. Treitschke and Bernhardi make of that a rea- son, and doubtless Professor Miinsterberg would also, for forcing it upon the rest. From our point of view, such shallow cosmopolitan- ism proves not the strength but the weakness of modern German culture. For it is precisely against this thin, colorless, swaggering, imperial art that the spirit of the smaller races in Europe is protesting. Modern German culture is not classical in the Goethean sense. It is not European in the Nietzschean sense. It is at once provincial and cosmopolitan. It has the bad qualities of a race that has refused, since Goethe and Nietzsche, to learn the "great style" from those Mediter- ranean masters who have the key to the only inter-national tradition worth anything, and it has also the bad qualities of an aggressive pe- dantic cosmopolitanism which is not worth any- thing at all. What is today most attractive in German literature is what is most German, not what is most cosmopolitan. It is, however, one 43 THE WAR AND CULTURE of the most striking peculiarities of German cul- ture that it delights in the pedantic substitution of what is vaguely cosmopolitan, for what is native and of the soil. It is indeed this power of cultural assimilation which makes it possible for Germans to adapt themselves more quickly than any other race to the manners and customs of a foreign country. How much easier, for instance, is it for Germans to become national- ized Americans than for Frenchmen or Eng- lishmen or Italians ! We are prepared never- theless to maintain that so far from this en- cyclopedic flexibility conducing to the highest culture, it is on the contrary a serious hindrance to it. The higher culture is not cosmopolitan and international. It is racial and organic. The supremely cultivated man is not the man of encyclopedic knowledge but the man who pos- sesses the key to distinction of style; and dis- tinction of style is a thing that springs up, like a flower or a tree, spontaneously out of the soil. The Idea which the Allies represent in this war, as the champions of the smaller nations and races, is the Idea of local and racial tradi- tion, of local and racial poetry and art and re- ligion, as opposed to this cold, hard, unsympa- thetic, encyclopedic culture, which may be called imperial or cosmopolitan. The British Empire, mindful of its former blunders, has recently inaugurated a more sympathetic regime in Ireland and Africa and India. The success of this new attitude, the true Liberal and Gladstonian attitude, as 44 A WAR OF IDEAS opposed to the imperial one, has been proved by the devotion of Irishmen and Indians and «-i Boers to the common cause of the Allies. Had the English method remained in its stiff Im-'^ "^^ perial fetters, had it remained Imperialism, a la Mr. Kipling, the cause of the AlHes would have lost this inspiring support. The bad Imperial- ism of Mr. Kipling has many points of re- semblance to the bad Imperialism of the Ger- man ideal; and it is a splendid victory for the wiser English spirit, the spirit that is at once what may be called Tory-Socialist and what may be called Democratic-Gladstonian, that it has in recent years completely overcome the Rhodes-Chamberlain-Kipling Imperialistic ideal. And what has been done in England will, we hope and believe, be done in Russia. Every- thing points to this. Russia has entered this struggle as the champion, not of Russian Im- perialism, but of Slavonic tradition. It is as the natural and religious head of the Slavonic races rather than as the chief of an autocratic bureaucracy that the Tsar has called his legions into the field. If, as the Indians believe, the Idea of the Allies will push England on to further liberation of India, and fuller sympathy with Indian racial traditions, the Idea of the AHies will also push Russia on, to the further liberation of Poland, and fuller sympathy with Polish racial traditions. The German Idea im- plies the assumption that not only German rule, but German culture, must be forced upon the nations; because it is, in its intrinsic nature, the 45 THE WAR AND CULTURE highest culture, and the best culture for hu- manity. This is precisely what England is find- ing a false and pernicious doctrine. It is the old Kipling method ; but it is not the method of the new Gladstonian Liberalism which now dominates the English system. There is a certain shallow plausibility lent to the German Idea by the very fact — which we have just noted — of the German tendency towards encyclopedic erudition and cosmo- politan colorlessness. The German Idea is to force this pedantic, laborious, scholastic, scientifically efficient but spiritually uninspiring cosmopolitanism upon the world, to the destruction of organic and spon- taneous race-instincts. Massive, patient, and efficient though the German intellect is, it would be a vast calamity to the world if this culture, so arrogant, so inflexible, so unsympathetic, were thrust upon us by the drill-sergeant and the machine. Out of this great war of Ideas, out of this war so devilish and appalling in its attendant miseries, good will indeed result if this German Idea, this hard, drastic, Imperialistic Idea, with its brutal cosmopolitan culture, is crushed forever! How powerful, how world-shaking, is the evolution of Ideas ! The conversion of Mr. Kipling himself will be, and is already, an amusing psychological spectacle! The Ameri- can world, the old Jeffersonian American tra- dition, has already felt great suspicion of what is called the "New Imperialism." Well! The 46 A WAR OF IDEAS New Imperialism is already defeated. It is de- feated with the defeat of Germany. It is de- feated with the triumph of the Latin and Celtic races. It is defeated by the emerging of the Slav. The New Imperialism is now the Old Imperialism. It is superseded, revoked, rele- gated to the historic rubbish-heap. The New Imperialism both in England and America al- ways hated the Latin and Celtic races. It regarded the Latin and Celtic races as its great enemy. It accused them of being over-civilized, over-imaginative, and, above all, inefficient. The Latin and Celtic races, it said, were too much interested in local tradition, were too absurdly passionate in defense of local traditions; were, in fact, too poetic, too imaginative, too super- stitious for the hard, positive facts of our modern world. "Let us," the New Imperiahsm said, "get rid of this fanciful nonsense, of this mystical balderdash. Let us get rid of these shams, and return to the authentic facts, the facts of science, efficiency, organization, and downright unsentimental force." The answer to this has been the present war: this war, wherein the Allies, by means of the spirit and passion drawn from their "mystical balderdash" are driving, even now, back towards its Fatherland, the great Engine of Efficiency ! If the German Idea implies the forcing of an efficient but unimaginative cosmopolitan culture upon the world, the Idea of the Allies implies what one might call the ideal of the federated traditions. The new world which we 47 THE WAR AND CULTURE look to see emerge from the defeat of Germany will be a world where the various customs, religions, manners, literatures, ideals, aspira- tions, traditions, with all their local interest and color, will have received a volcanic stimulus, and will be free to develop, as they ought to develop, side by side, and on their native ground, un- disturbed by imperialistic interference. This we trust will happen in India. This we trust will happen in Persia. This we trust will happen in Ireland, Poland, Belgium, Servia, Denmark, and wherever else the dominant Idea of the Allies has been carried by victory! The war will indeed have been wasted, will indeed have been vain insanity, if the Allies do not see to it that these changes take place. Fortunately the war is not a war fought alone by such imperial nations as England and Russia. France is in it ; France is committed to it. And it is inconceivable that France should allow the intellectual and spiritual aspects of the issue to lapse at the last hour. We are now therefore in a position from which it is possible to sum up the results we have obtained. This terrible war, caused pri- marily by the natural egoism of races, has be- come, by the logic of events, and by the invisible pressure of the system of things, a war of Ideas. The Idea of Germany is to force upon the world, by means of an omnipotent and irre- sistible State-Machine, a certain hard, scientific, unimaginative, and efficient culture. The Idea of the Allies is to protect the indi- 48 A WAR OF IDEAS vidual against the State, the Httle nations against the empires, and the drama, color, pas- sion, beauty, and tradition of the various races of the earth, against a monotonous and murder- ous uniformity! 49 CHAPTER HI. GERMAN CULTURE VERSUS RUSSIAN CULTURE. Professor Miinsterberg is of opinion that this war is ultimately a war between Ger- many and Russia, between Teuton and Slav. He regards the entrance of jealous Eng- land and revengeful France as trifling by-issues. The real matter at stake is between the West and the East of Europe. We think that there is much to be said for this view. For although as a matter of fact the presence of the Anglo- Saxon, the Celt, the Frenchman, and possibly the Italian, materially affects, as we have seen, the nature of the Allies' Idea; it is quite true that, in its final summing up, the war seems most especially to be a war between Slav and Teuton. But Professor Miinsterberg gives to this aspect of the matter a color against which it is necessary to protest with all our energy. He assumes, in true German fashion, that for Germany to be defeated by Russia would mean the defeat of culture by barbarism. "The Ger- mans know," says he, "what a German defeat must mean to the ideal civilization of the world. The culture of Germany would be trampled down by half-cultured Tartars." And again : "The sympathies of the American nation ought not to be whipped into the camp of the Cos- 50 GERMAN CULTURE VS. RUSSIAN CULTURE sacks. Americans ought not to rejoice when the uncultured hordes of the East march over the frontier." Professor Miinsterberg is, however, too much of a psychologist to confine himself to these cheap references to Tartars and Cos- sacks. In his chapter entitled "The Russians" he attempts to analyze the real difference be- tween this German culture, upon which the future of civilization depends, and this strange, foreign, dangerous culture of the Slavonic race. His admissions are extremely important, and are themselves sufficient to answer the more superficial opposition to Russia, which some Anglo-Saxons, as well as Germans, feel. "The Slavic world," he says, "is full of deep melan- cholic beauty, of devoted loyalty, of religious democracy, of sincere idealism. The harshness of its autocratic regime and the widespread corruption of its upper classes are unimportant compared with the sterling virtues of the Rus- sian people. Yet the Germans feel strongly that a fundamental contrast separates the Ger- man nation from the Russian. The German culture is active and productive ; the Russian is at its best passive and uncreative. The Ger- man soul is full of sunshine; there is something gloomy and oppressive about the Russian soul. This inner dcadness, this lack of productive energy, is in no way contradictory to the tre- mendous world-power of the Russian nation, organized in the Tsar's empire. A superstition binds the people into a solid mass just as firmly as any liberal ideas bind free nations like Ger- 51 THE WAR AND CULTURE many and America. As of the Germans it is true of the Russians, that nation and Emperor are one. The Romanoffs do not force the peo- ple into world-poHtics ; they are only the instru- ment of the somber, silent masses whose ortho- dox belief pushes forward to subjugate the world. No Teuton can coolly deliberate whether the German or Russian civilization is the better. He must feel that one is progress and the other regress, that one is cultural blessing and the other cultural depravity, that one is life and the other internal death, in spite of external colossal force and mystical beauty." In another place he tells us, he "spent many a night in radical Russian circles, with the tea from the Samovar, and the Russian cigarettes, and the dreams of a better Russia. But all were dreams, full of sadness." Having thus quoted Miinsterberg's view of the difference between these races and having noted his faith in the German soul "full of sun- shine," let us see how far his estimate of the situation covers the facts of this complex field. First of all we must see how far our other Ger- man authorities, Treitschke and Bernhardi, bear out Professor Miinsterberg's words. They do indeed bear them out with something like a vengeance, though it must be confessed that, in their point of view, there is more arrogance and less "sunshine" than in the professor's. "To no nation, except the German," says Bern- hardi, "has it been given to enjoy in its inner self that which is given to mankind as a whole. 52 GERMAN CULTURE VS. RUSSIAN CULTURE We often see in other nations a greater intensity of specialized ability, but never the same ca- pacity for generalization and absorption. It is this quality which specially fits us for the leader- ship of the intellectual world, and imposes on us the obligation to maintain that position." And again, "From the point of view of civiliza- tion, it is imperative to preserve the German spirit, and by so doing to establish 'foci' of uni- versal culture. If we wish to compete further with them (the other nations), a policy which our population and our civilization both entitle and compel us to adopt, we must not hold back in the hard struggle for the sovereignty of the world." By these quotations it will be seen that both Miinsterberg and Bernhardi hold the view that, from a universal standpoint, German cul- ture is the most precious thing that the world possesses. It is precisely this that we absolutely and entirely deny. For it must be remembered that when they speak in this way they are speak- ing of modern German culture. This is proved by the emphasis laid by both upon positivity, science, criticism, efficiency, organization, in- ventive progress, and so forth, which are all characteristic, not of the old sympathetic ideal- istic Germany of the days of Goethe and Heine, but of the new energetic, industrial, imperial Germany, of the school of Bismarck, Moltke, Treitschke, and Bernhardi. The Franco-Prussian war had a terrific effect upon German culture — an efifect from S3 THE WAR AND CULTURE which the world is still suffering. Bern- hardi knows this perfectly well and re- joices in it. Miinsterberg must also know it well, but it is difficult to believe that he, the gentle Harvard teacher, can rejoice in it. What he does is, really, to try to prove, a little dis- ingenuously, that there has been no radical change. He says "the neighbors begrudged this prosperity of the Fatherland, which had been weak and poor and through centuries satisfied with songs and thoughts and dreams." In other words, all that has happened is, that the poetical and idealistic Germany has suddenly become a rich and industrial nation, without losing its "songs and thoughts and dreams." But alas! such an evolution as this has to be paid for. It is not only Germany's neighbors who have re- gretted this change. Germany's own pro- foundest thinker, the author of "Thus spake Zarathustra," has regretted it. This Germany, of "songs and thoughts and dreams," of which Miinsterberg speaks, sounds extremely like the Russia he condemns — this sad, mystical, beauti- ful, mysterious Russia, whose strange and troubled spirit is to bring such a darkening of the efficient "sunshine" of the German soul. Professor Miinsterberg wilfully confuses the old romantic federated Germany, of Jena and Weimar, of Dresden and Munich, with the new Imperialistic Germany, of Potsdam and Berlin. The Franco-Prussian war changed everything. It gave a new direction to German culture. Be- fore it, German culture was either local and 54 GERMAN CULTURE VS. RUSSIAN CULTURE traditional, or it was classical, in the Lessing- Goethe sense. After it, it became scientific, efficient, positive, materialistic and pedantically overbearing. Thus when the professor speaks of the East Prussian city of Immanuel Kant being ravaged "by Cossacks with their Po- groms," he gives a completely false picture of the situation. What really confronts the pas- sion and religion, the imagination and the faith of modern Russia when it enters modern Ger- many, is not the philosophy or the morality of Immanuel Kant, but something altogether dif- ferent. As the great Nietzsche says — this master-mind to whom Professor Miinsterberg does not once allude — "There are simple people in some corner of the earth today — perhaps in Germany — who are disposed to believe in all seriousness that the world was put right (he is writing in 1873) two years ago, and that all stern and gloomy views of life are now contra- dicted by 'facts.' The foundation of the New German Empire is, to them, the decisive blow that annihilates all pessimistic philosophers." Reading these words of Nietzsche, written forty years ago, one cannot help thinking of what Professor Miinsterberg says of the "sunshine" of the German soul, and its active, positive, scientific efficiency. "Such men" (our "sun- shine" philosophers), Nietzsche goes on, "have lost the last remnant of feeling, not only for philosophy, but also for religion, and have put in its place a spirit not so much of optimism as of journalism, the evil spirit that broods over 55 THE WAR AND CULTURE the day — and the daily paper. Every philosophy that believes the problem of the universe to be shelved, or even solved, by a political event, is a sham philosophy. There have been in- numerable states founded since the beginning of the world; that is an old story. How should a political innovation manage once for all to make a contented race of the dwellers on this earth? If any one believes in his heart that this is possible, he should report himself to our authorities ; he really deserves to be a professor of philosophy in a German university." Nietz- sche goes on to speak of the Idea of the State. "A man who thinks State-service to be his high- est duty, very possibly knows no higher one ; yet there are both men and duties in a region be- yond — and one of these duties, that seems to me at least of higher value than state-service, is to destroy stupidity in all its forms — and this par- ticular stupidity among them. And I have to do with a class of men whose teleological con- ceptions extend further than the well-being of a State; I mean with philosophers — and only with them in their relation to culture, which is again almost independent of 'the good of the State.' Of the many links that make up the twisted chain of humanity, some are of gold and some of pewter. How does the philosopher of our time regard culture? Quite differently, I assure you, from the professors who are so content with their new state." From these re- marks of the great German thinker it will be seen that both the American and English critics who 56 GERMAN CULTURE VS. RUSSIAN CULTURE class Nietzsche so thoughtlessly with Treitschke and Bernhardi have hardly so much as looked into his work. Nietzsche, it is true, denounces "Christian morality" ; but the modern German military philosopher does not denounce "Chris- tian morality." He calls in the aid both of God and the higher ethics to support his Pan-German State. There was indeed something that Nietzsche hated more even than Christian morality, and that was this very "Philistine- culture" which modern German arms are seek- ing to force upon the world. How much they make of "Science," these modern apologists for Germany ! It is precisely because of this progressive "Science" that Miinsterberg finds German culture so superior to the Russian. But what has Nietzsche to say of this bragging "Science"? "Science has the same relation to wisdom as current morality has to holiness : she is cold and dry, loveless and ignorant of any deep feeling of dissatisfaction and longing — for science only sees the problems of knowledge, and suffering is something ahen and unintelHgible to her world — though no less a problem for that!" No wonder, thinking of modern German science in this spirit, Nietzsche found himself turning away from Germany, turning indeed towards Russia, for a psycho- logical insight that should go deeper and further — that should have less perhaps of Professor Miinsterberg's "sunshine" in its soul, but more of the tragic irony of life! It may be true that by many portions of his 57 THE WAR AND CULTURE work Nietzsche has put weapons into the hands of these State-worshippers and force-worship- pers, but it is altogether untrue that he belongs to their camp. They can quote from him — as a matter of fact Bernhardi often quotes from Goethe — but he is not of their company. He is of the company of Heraclitus and Heine. His authors are Russian and French. His cities are the cities of the Mediterranean. The culture that Nietzsche fought for was European cul- ture, not German culture; certainly not German culture stiffened out into a pasteboard cosmo- politanism. Let him speak once more. "Of all the evil results," he says, in his attack upon Strauss, "due to the last contest with France, the most deplorable, perhaps, is that widespread and even universal error of public opinion, and of all who think publicly, that German culture was also victorious in the struggle, and that it should now, therefore, be decked with garlands, as a fit recognition of such extraordinary events and success. This error is pernicious because it threatens to convert our victory into a signal defeat. A defeat? I should say rather into the uprooting of the 'German mind' for the benefit of the 'German Empire.' There can be no question of the victory of German cul- ture for the simple reason that French culture remains as heretofore and that we depend upon it as heretofore." Now let us see how Professor Miinsterberg's "sunshine" of the "German soul," and his amaz- 58 GERMAN CULTURE VS. RUSSIAN CULTURE ing statement that "Germany is fighting today the battle of Western ciziHzation," looks in the light of Nietzsche's criticism. "Sunshine," does he say? Let us hear Nietzsche: "Since the war all is gladness, dignity, and self-conscious- ness in this merry throng. After the startling successes of German culture, it regards itself not only as approved and sanctioned but almost as sanctified. The units of this caste (the scholar- caste. Professor Miinsterberg's caste) are too thoroughly convinced that their own scholar- ship is the ripest and most perfect fruit of the ages — in fact of all ages — to see any necessity for a care of German culture in general. Everywhere, where knowledge and not ability, where information and not art, hold the first rank — everywhere in fact where life bears testi- mony to the kind of culture extant — there is now only one specific German culture, and this is the culture that is supposed to have con- quered France." In what sense can German cul- ture be said to have conquered? In none what- soever ; for the moral qualities of severe disci- pline, of more placid obedience, have nothing in common with culture. Meanwhile let us not forget that in all matters of form we are, and must be, just as dependent upon Paris now as we were before the war, for up to the present there has been no such thing as an original German culture. We ought all to have become aware of this of our own accord. Besides, one of the few who had the right to speak to Ger- mans in terms of reproach publicly drew atten- 59 THE WAR AND CULTURE tion to the fact. "We Germans are of yester- day," Goethe once said to Eckermann. "True, for the last hundred years we have dihgently cultivated ourselves, but a few centuries may yet have to run their course before our fellow- countrymen become permeated with sufficient intellectuality and higher culture to have it said of them, it is a long time since they were bar- barians/' "What species of men have attained to supremacy in Germany? This species of men I will name — they are the Philistines of culture. But Philistinism, despite its systematic organi- zation and power, does not constitute a culture by virtue of its system alone; it does not even constitute an inferior culture, but invariably the reverse — namely, firmly established barbarity. For the uniformity of character which is so apparent in German scholars of today is only the result of a conscious or unconscious ex- clusion and negation of all the artistically pro- ductive forms and requirements of a genuine style." But perhaps Professor Miinsterberg will reply that these strictures of Nietzsche were written before the appearance upon the scene of "the Harnacks, Haeckels and Euckens." Alas! I am afraid that even "the Harnacks, Haeckels and Euckens" would not make him change his mind — possibly might even strengthen him in his opinion ! "Who are the men of cul- ture," says our professor, "if not the Harnacks, Haeckels and Euckens"? I am afraid the "men 60 GERMAN CULTURE VS. RUSSIAN CULTURE of culture" are precisely these Lessings, Goethes, Schopenhauers and Nietzsches, who would be — one knows it only too well — not in- clined to consider very seriously this particular professorial list. It is, let us repeat, the strangest thing that Professor Miinsterberg should have forgotten Nietzsche. It is very significant, too! It means that typical modern German culture is just as self-satisfied and complacent, just as Philistine, in fact, as it was in the days that fol- lowed the last war. Professor Miinsterberg may be able (doubtless he knows that well enough!) to enlist plenty of Anglo-Saxon pub- lic opinion in his tacit attempt to disparage Nietzsche in comparison with Eucken — but any really cultivated German-American must give vent to a bitter and melancholy sigh at such a proceeding. And what would Goethe say? Goethe who "could not hate the French because he owed so much of his intellectual culture to them." For Professor Miinsterberg not to have mentioned Treitschke is even stranger still. Is Treitschke not considered a genius, under those "elms of Harvard," where the professor tells us he would like to have a few quiet words with "Monsieur Bergson" who "surely did not find anything worth learning in Russia"? No, it will not do. These claims for the world-importance of modern German culture fall to the ground when subjected to criticism from those Germans who are of real universal 61 THE WAR AND CULTURE value. Modern German culture, by reason of its patience, its elaboration, its scientific system, its immense erudition, has its place in the world ; but the place it holds does not fit it for any dominant claims. The place it holds cannot for a moment give it a right to compare its gifts to civilization with those for which we are now looking to France or Russia. It is indeed of Russia that I wish now to speak. Putting Nietzsche, who is as unpopular with patriotic professors today as Goethe was in his time, aside for the present, who, as a matter of fact, is there, among modern German writers or artists, who can compare for origi- naHty with those of Russia? Sudermann and Hauptmann are famous names, but who would name them in the same breath with Tolstoi, Turgenieff, or Dostoievsky? It was Dostoiev- sky, according to Nietzsche's own confession, who taught him the only psychology he ever needed to learn from a contemporary. It is Dostoievsky now, who, as a thinker, divides the higher intelligence of Europe with Nietzsche himself. It is quite possible tliat Professor Miinsterberg may find support, here, also, among those pseudo-cultivated circles to whom he loves to appeal. No doubt there are un- fortunate people, both in England and America, who regard Dostoievsky as a dangerous and un- sound writer. Such persons as wish to retain that progressive "sunshine" in their soul, of which the professor speaks, might indeed be frightened of this formidable and devastating 62 GERMAN CULTURE VS. RUSSIAN CULTURE psychologist, who considers the truth of things more important than "sunshine," and the tragedy of the human spirit more interesting than the most prosperous "progress." But even these unfortunates bow to the name of Tolstoi and recognize that Turgeniefif has more style in his little finger than Hauptmann, Sudermann, Harnack and Eucken in their whole bodies. Professor Miinsterberg's idea of the melancholy "deadness" of the Russian people is so ridiculous that it hardly needs comment. "The first thing that strikes you," writes Maurice Baring, "when you go to Russia, is the cheerfulness of the people and the good humor of the average man. The average Russian is well-educated, cheerful, sociable, intensely gre- garious, hospitable, talkative, expansive, good- humored and good-natured. You hear often in Russia the phrase "shirokaya natura" applied to the Russian temperament — a large nature. It means that the Russian temperament is gener- ous, unstinted, democratic and kind. Good- heartedness, and sometimes great-heartedness, is the asset of the average Russian. He is the most tolerant of human beings. Stinginess is a quality rare in Russia. Thrift and economy are not among those virtues which are commonest there. On the other hand, broadness of mind and largeness of heart are virtues which are among the commonest." These facts about the Russian people are enough to make one suspect that it were quite as beneficial, and probably more beneficial, for civilization in general, that 63 THE WAR AND CULTURE Russia, rather than Germany, should be the country of the future. As a matter of fact, as a great American novehst, himself of German descent, admitted to me recently, there is more in common between the psychological character of Russia and the psychological character of the United States than between the latter and any other nation. There is the same youthfulness of feeling, the same tragic-comic confusion, the same beautiful, living, chaotic sense of great elemental forces gathering together in the dawn. Even Professor Miinsterberg recognizes the pas- sion for democracy, for equality, which exists in Russia — a passion which rebels at any at- tempt to substitute specialized superiority for the elemental primitive emotions and what is basic in the human race. The professor recog- nizes this, but uses it as a reproach. "The Rus- sian democracy," says he, "aims to bring high and low to the same level, but by lowering the high and bringing them to the elementary state of simple humanity." One feels, however, that if the "high" are only "Haeckels, Euckens and Harnacks," the modern exponents of what Nietzsche calls "Philistine-culture," this "ele- mentary state of simple humanity" is something quite as desirable. When one seeks to discover exactly what the professor, under his "elms of Harvard," means by the "cultural depravity" of the Russian people, compared with the "culture blessing" of the German people, one finds it, apparently, in his objection to the intensity of their religious faith. Now, I can quite believe 64 GERMAN CULTURE VS. RUSSIAN CULTURE that from the point of view of PhiHstine-cul- ture, from the point of view of that self-satisfied superior "modernism," that has so Httle imagina- tion, and so much "sunshine" in its soul, the re- ligious faith of the Russian people does appear weird and strange. It probably appears ridiculous. The "modernists" of Germany, un- like the profounder "modernists" of France, as can be noted in the famous contest between the Abbe Loisy and Professor Harnack, have not grasped the true philosophy of religion. They patronize it and explain it, but they do not get to the bottom of it. Dostoievsky, who under- stands the real spirit of Holy Russia better than anyone else, indicates clearly enough that there are depths in "that elementary state of simple humanity," depths in "that complete submission to the church" which are much, much more than "a pathetic mixture of ignorance and supersti- tion." When Oscar Wilde — does a culture-PhiH- stine permit one to quote Oscar Wilde? — wishes, in his penitentiary apologia in De Profundis, to indicate the essence of religion, as it appeals to the soul of an artist, it is of the worship of the "White Christ who comes out of Russia" that he is compelled to speak. The great Nietzsche, himself the enemy of rehgion, when he wishes to point to an antagonist worthy of his weapons, points to the Catholic Church of Seventeenth Century France, and to the abysmal soul of the Russian race. Does, one wonders. Professor Miinsterberg really think 5 65 THE WAR AND CULTURE that the mild latitudinarianism of such discreet theologians as Harnack and Eucken is to be the last word of the tragic, troubled heart of humanity, upon the mystery that surrounds it? It may be that what we now call religion is destined to disappear. It is more than doubt- ful, if it be so, in spite of easy latitudinarian compromises. But in any case the culture of the world is surely better served by a race whose deep and formidable spirit is constantly brood- ing upon the ultimate depths, than by a race whose materialistic science is so "active and pro- ductive," a race that has so much self-satisfac- tion, and "sunshine" in its progressive soul. Put the case clearly and fairly. This has be- come a war of Ideas. It has become, what Pro- fessor MiJnsterberg himself calls, a war of civilization. What then does German civiliz'n- tion represent ? It represents scientific efficiency, scholarly erudition, positive criticism, and materialistic progress. And what does Russian civilization represent? It represents — even Miinsterberg admits that — "the elementary state of simple humanity" ; it represents democratic equality and democratic sympathy; it represents (to quote Baring again) "a human Christian charity, warmer in kind and intenser in degree, and expressed with a greater simplicity and sincerity than I have met in any other people anywhere else — a quality which gives poignancy to its music, sincerity and simplicity to its re- ligion, manners, intercourse, music, singing, art, acting — in a word to its art, its life, and its 66 GERMAN CULTURE VS. RUSSIAN CULTURE faith." For, after all, it is not only in its mysti- cal faith that Russia is pre-eminent. Some of the most remarkable and most original, of what are absurdly called "cultural manifestations," owe their rise to the passionate seeking for new adventures of Russian sensibility. We hear much, and justly hear much, of what the "Little Theatre movement" is doing for the modern drama. For the origin of the "Little Theatre movement" one must look to Russia. It is not necessary to speak of Russian dancing, of Russian songs, of Russian music. All these have a quality far more interesting and stirring than anything produced by modern German culture. German culture has become critical, pedantic, erudite, imitative, and materialistic. Where it dis- plays idealistic tendencies it does so in so tedious and "rational" a way that all the rhythm and lilt, all the surprises and the tang, all the dangerousness and arresting shocks of the adventurous spirit of humanity are stifled in sawdust. After all, culture is nothing if it is not a passionate and world-deep flame. Mere learned tinkering with technical problems, mere idealistic compromises between faith and unfaith, mere piling up of knowledge, mere system-making, machine-driving and efficiency-drilling, do not make culture. Culture is a living thing, a crea- tive thing. It has to do with magnanimity of temperament and with a capacity for tragic joys and sorrows. It is the beautiful form and ex- 67 THE WAR AND CULTURE pression given to the striving, struggling, wrestling spirit of the "soul of the world." It is precisely because Tolstoi has expressed in so powerful a manner this elementary wrestling of the human soul with the fatality of circum- stance that he has become such a world- force. The influence of Tolstoi — an influence all in favor of democracy — is itself proof of what the Russian spirit is prepared to do for the world. Into what a different atmosphere are we led when we turn from "the Harnacks and Haeckels and Euckens," who, on Professor Miinsterberg's own showing, represent German culture, to the genius and humanity of Tolstoi ! I do not feel the presence of the terrible and beautiful realities of life so closely; I do not feel the workshop of what Goethe calls "the Mothers" so formidably near, when I read Hauptmann and Sudermann, as when I read the Russian writers. Can it be said that even Pro- fessor Miinsterberg, with all his technical psy- chology, his "discipline" and discretion, pos- sesses as much creative insight into human nature as, for instance, Maxim Gorki? One cannot help thinking, sometimes, as this appal- ling war goes forward, with such incredible en- durance and heroism on both sides, how good it would be for the race at large if non-com- batant writers and professors could deal in the same heroic and elemental manner with the mysteries of life, wrestling, with tragic obsti- nacy, with the dark angel of truth. If indeed there is going to be any real light thrown upon 68 GERMAN CULTURE VS. RUSSIAN CULTURE the bewildering chaos of things by human think- ing, it will be surely thrown by such thinking as is drastic and adventurous and "dangerous," rather than by such thinking as is self-satisfied and discreet. Nature gives up her secrets in the final result only to genius and to courage. Life gives up its secrets only to those who re- semble life, in the large desperateness of their invasions, and the demoniac violence of their assaults. Culture, in the deeper issues, is no smooth, placid, academic thing. It is no care- fully arranged system of rules and theories. It is the passionate- and imaginative instinct for things that are distinguished, heroic and rare. It is the subtilizing and deepening of the human spirit in presence of the final mystery. It is inconceivable that it should be good for civilization at large to witness the triumph of the German spirit over Europe. The triumph of the German spirit over Europe would mean the triumph of system rather than life, of criti- cism rather than creation, of materialism rather than mysticism, and of self-satisfied optimism, rather than those tragic questionings of fate that mark the perplexity of the noble soul. Scientific efficiency, material progress, inex- haustible erudition — these are not everything. Man cannot live by science alone, or disciphne either. Life must be lived by the masses, by the people; and the forlorn hope of religion, throwing a desperate torch-light upon their road, may prove, in the long run, of more avail to 69 THE WAR AND CULTURE the race than much accumulation of technical knowledge. Professor Munsterberg, like so many other discreet idealists, uses the word "superstition" as a brand of reproach. I do not know. It is easy to dismiss a splendid and passionate re- ligious faith in this light way; but I, for one, have not read "The Idiot" and "The Brothers Karamazov" for nothing. In looking round at this dark hour for some great and tragic mind, capable of dealing with the mysteries of life as heroically as these enduring soldiers (on both sides) are deahng with the mysteries of death; I find such a mind rather in Feodor Dostoievsky than in any other. And it is not necessary to point out that this great genius — being what they call a "Slavo-phile" — held the view that if a tired and materialistic world was to be saved at all, it could only be saved by the courage and faith of the Russian people. But Professor Miinsterberg carries his argument further. He says that the result of the war, if the Allies win, will be to increase the power of the Russian Empire out of all proportion. "France will suffer ; and England will suffer more. France and Italy, as well as the northern states, must become dependencies of the onmov- ing giant. Great Britain cannot hold India after Russia has gained this new strength ; India is ripe to fall. When India is cut off, Canada, Australia, South Africa must follow. In the meantime Japan and China and India will be- gin their fight for the control of the Pacific. 70 GERMAN CULTURE VS. RUSSIAN CULTURE Chinese- Japanese and Hindu infiltration of Cen- tral and South America is the next step. In the meantime England and America will them- selves have become rivals, which will weaken each other. Jealousies will lead to hostilities, and when these struggles on the Atlantic have re- duced the resisting power of the peoples about the western ocean the time will have come when Russia can win, over England, and the united Orientals over America. The final outcome will be the triumph of Asia and of Asia only. Cul- turally Russia is Asia. The triumph of Russia over the Atlantic, and of Japan, China and India over the Pacific, means the complete control of Asia over the globe. What does this contrast of the Antipodes mean? It is a contrast be- tween feeling and thought ; it is a world-conflict between mystical devotion and efficiency, be- tween the instructive hfe and the life of techni- cal civilization, between nature and culture, be- tween the heart and the brain. From the stand- point of western culture the Asiatic world must appear anti-cultural, superstitious, semi-barbaric. From the Asiatic standpoint the western world is unnatural, artificial, irreligious, worthless. Every great religion came from Asia." "Every great religion came from Asia." And every great philosophy, too ! — one might permit oneself to reply. Ah, no. Professor Miinster- berg! If you are right in holding the view that German efficiency and technical civilization is what the West stands for ; and Russian devotion, mysticism, poetic beauty, and clairvoyant in- 71 THE WAR AND CULTURE stinct, is what the East stands for; then all I can say is, I am for the East against the West; and the sooner the East, with its dreams, and its poetry, and its beauty, and its distinction, conquers the West with its aeroplanes, its Zep- pelins, its submarines, its Krupp guns, its armored trains, and its newspapers, the better for the world ! But Professor Munsterberg is not right. He is limiting culture to his technical German schools. He is limiting western civilization to German culture. He is forgetting the great artists. He has forgotten the great saints. Pro- fessor Miinsterberg should do better than thus betray himself as what Nietzsche calls a culture- Philistine. He has, indeed, lifted the mask a little dangerously here. It would have been wiser to have continued his cautious generalities about the "colored races." He has shown that under the mild skin of a German-American professor lurks, after all, the old Pan-German wolf ! Here, no doubt. General Von Bernhardi would be in complete agreement with him. Such a war — to be waged by the efficient, ma- terialistic West, with its scientific "progress," against the spiritual and mystical East — would exactly suit the general's humor. Together, he and Professor Miinsterberg, would be able to carry the war very far. Not only in fact against the eastern races, but against their ideas ; espe- cially against that strange, oriental, religious idea of "pity" — so inimical to modern "culture" ! n GERMAN CULTURE VS. RUSSIAN CULTURE How satisfactory it is to get at last a clear notion of what Professor Miinsterberg means when he talks of culture. From his point of view, as he betrays it now, we can better under- stand Nietzsche's association of the thing with "Philistinism," with a PhiHstinism, which, "despite its organization and power, does not even constitute an inferior culture, but in- variably the reverse — namely, firmly established barbarity." "Asiatic longing," says the professor, in order to make his position perfectly clear — "Asiatic longing, from Buddha to Tolstoi, means a suppression of the human demands, a somber, dreamy life without desires. Every great re- ligion comes from Asia." He even conjures up the retrospect of some triumphant Oriental when "science and scholar- ship and inventions of a thousand kinds" have been destroyed. "Two thousand years ago Russia undertook to punish the chief province of the thought-dis- trict, its small neighbor, Germany. The good Russian Cossacks destroyed the last of the thought-people in Europe, and the Japanese, Chinese and Hindus swept over America. Let us be grateful that at the decisive hour of this holy world-war against the worshippers of thought, France and England helped us Asiatics." Thus Professor Miinsterberg, under his "elms at Harvard"! Oh, for the great spirit of Schopenhauer, the last of German philosophers, to rise up and 73 THE WAR AND CULTURE make its voice heard ! Is not this efficient thought-driUing, this pseudo-scientific rational- ism, precisely the very thing that roused that great European to make his furious attacks upon Hegel and his Berlin theories of the "rationahty of the real"? How clearly we dis- cern it, appearing again — academic and mechan- ical as ever — the cloven-hoof of "authority" and "order" and "system" and "discipline" ! Hegel, with the Prussian State behind him; Hegel, with an enormous policeman to clear his path — was he not the very originator and master of this singular new academy? Ah ! Professor Miinsterberg ; one must permit oneself to remind you that the really great kings of "thought" — from Plato to Spinoza, from Spinoza to Schopenhauer — have looked ever to the East for their inspiration. It is, of course, as all his readers know, from Nietzsche, and his "good European" idea, that Miinsterberg borrows this notion of a war be- tween Europe and Asia. But what Nietzsche meant by European culture was, as we have seen, something quite different from what Miinsterberg means. Nietzsche's culture was Latin culture, Mediterranean culture, classical culture. It was a culture that issued in distinr- tion of style. It was a culture that held in con- tempt the sort of fussy pseudo-scientific "psy- chology" which is so popular today. It was, in a word, a culture that is the very opposite of all that modern Germany means. It even pro- fessed a disdain for that laborious over-emphasis 74 GERMAN CULTURE VS. RUSSIAN CULTURE upon "science" which is the modern battle-cry. It was, as all readers of Nietzsche know, essentially an "instinctive" and a "natural" thing. It looked with reverence upon the Hindus of India, and the Mohammedans of North Africa. It did not hesitate — one re- members many epigrams in that direction — to do honor to the Arabs of the desert. Indeed, when it comes to the point, one might say that the kind of individual recklessness and daring, the kind of chivalrous irony, displayed by the Cossacks, and the English, and the French, on the field of battle, is much nearer the ideal of a Nietzschean hero than the scientific military training and obedient machine-like endurance, of the well-drilled German hosts. We are not, however, discussing at present the appearance that culture assumes when it goes to war. One can only repeat that the staggering heroism of both sides in this terrible struggle makes one wish that something of the same courage might be displayed by philosophers in their wrestling with mystery. If only phi- losophers and professors cared as little for pub- lic opinion, cared as little for personal safety, as these brave soldiers do, the intellectual ad- vance of the world would be much more swift! The heroic German nation is today in arms against the world, and though the final issue of the struggle cannot be doubted, it is certain that no easy triumph awaits the AUies. This cry — "The Fatherland contra Mundum!" is one that cannot help but win responsive emotion in 75 THE WAR AND CULTURE the heart of every human being who is not de- praved by commercial selfishness. It is a cry that must even now be rousing every brave German home, from Danzig to Cologne. But the heroism of our enemies must not blind us to the underlying causes of the struggle, must not make us forget the great issues that are at stake. So ambiguous and chaotic are affairs in this world, it may well happen that such heroism, such amazing unity and obedience, should be used — and nobly used — in a wrong cause and totally in vain! Our analysis of the logic of events shows how wrong this cause is, shows how fatal it would be for the world if Germany were to win. Germany is fighting — pushed on by her "Harnacks, Haeckels and Euckens" — pushed on by her Miinsterbergs — in order to fetter and enchain the world in the pseudo-scientific chains of mechanical order, mechanical efficiency, and materialistic thought. The Allies are fighting to liberate the world from this oppressive tyranny. They are using the strength and dar- ing of the Russian Empire and the strength and daring of the British Empire, in order that all races and countries, both in the West and the East, shall be free to develop their intellect, their traditions, their art, their religious faith, unpersecuted by German science. If when the war is over the Russian Empire and the British Empire, or one or the other of them, were to use their victory to force Anglo- Saxon ideas or Slavonic ideas upon races that Id GERMAN CULTURE VS. RUSSIAN CULTURE were neither Anglo-Saxon nor Slavonic — upon the Teutonic states, for example — it would be the duty of the other Alhes, the duty of France ) and Japan and Italy — if Italy joins in — to see .^ to it that the great complex Idea, which they all share in common, was not thus narrowed and perverted. No, this is not a war between Europe led by Germany, and Asia led by Russia and Eng- land ; it is a war between the mechanical efficiency of Germany and the instinct of self- preservation of the rest of the world. Let Russia give more liberty to her Polish and Finnish and Jewish subjects ; let England give more liberty to Ireland and to India. Let both of them refrain from imposing their ideas upon Teutonic people. Then it will be perfectly lawful for Russia to snatch Slavonic races from the grip of Germany and for England and France to liberate Danes, Flemings, and Gauls. 1/ If the result of the war, upon Germany her-,^ self, is to destroy the new Bismarckian Empire, "^Vi and throw her back upon her ancient free states, , no German who loves real German culture need