“A war of exhaustion.” How often we use those words! They are current in all the belligerent countries, and in all they are unreally used, as yet. But they are, I fear, literally true. It is a war which—save for some happy chance—can hardly end till one group or the other have no longer the men to hold their lines. The sway of the fighting is of no great moment; it does not seem to matter where precisely the killing, maiming, and capturing go on, so long as they do go on with a certain mathematical regularity. A year or so hence, when the total disablement is nearer twenty than ten millions, the meaning of the words will be a little clearer, and they will probably only then be used by the side whose united population is still more than twice that of the other side. Two years hence they will be seen to have meant exactly what they said. All the swinging from optimism to pessimism and back again, the cock-a-hoop of the Press one day, the dirge of the Press the next; the alarms and excursions about the failure of this or that—they are all storms in teacups. The wills of the nations fighting are equally engaged, and will not break; the energies will not break; the food will probably not quite fail; the money will be found somehow; but the human flesh will give out, in time—that is all; on which side it will give out first may be left to the child who can count up to two. No glory about this business—just ding-dong shambles!

If one believed, with a certain Englishman, that there was no real struggle of ideals involved, these words “a war of exhaustion,” meaning what they really do, would be too intolerable even to think of. He who denies this to be a struggle of ideals may have a brilliant intellect, but he can surely have none of that instinctive perception of the essence and atmosphere of things, which is a so much surer guide than reason. He has perceived doubtless that autocratists and force-worshippers in England, in Russia, in Italy (there are but few in France) are fighting against the Central Empires as furiously as if they were the most ardent lovers of liberty; and that the democrats and humanists in Central Europe are fighting for their countries as devotedly as their force-worshipping rulers, and he has thought: “This is a mere blind game of ‘kill your neighbour,’ with nothing real at stake save the aggrandizement of one group of countries or the other.” But behind all this is the psychological heart of the matter—the states of mind in the belligerent countries before they began to fight. There are racial temperaments to which certain ideals are fatal. The Teuton of all men requires the Christian, or shall we say the humanistic, ethic, to modify something science-ridden, overbearing, and heady in his soul. The Teuton, before the new philosophy of self-expansion at all costs laid hold on him, was welcome, from his many great qualities, in a world of other men. But his was the last nature that could afford to succumb wholesale to the faith that his race was the only race that mattered. If he could see himself he would realize that the very thoroughness and over-exaltation of his nature made it ruinous for him to tamper with this particular ideal, for he was bound sooner or later to run it to death, to the danger and alarm of all other races. No one outside Germany, unless his mind was warped, could miss this latter-day Teutonic absorption in self; the Teuton has dinned it into every ear, and forgotten, in so doing, that we should not take off discount for temperamental extravagance of diction. The German imperialistic patriot has done an incalculable, perhaps fatal, harm to the country he loves so passionately. But even discounting for rhodomontade, no observer who has feelers, can fail to be aware of the spiritual change in Germany. I remember one tiny instance out of many—a mere straw showing the direction of the wind. The winter before the war there were in a certain hotel in Egypt four Teutons. A quiet, dignified old man, his tiny, quiet, dignified wife, and their two big sons. The difference between the two generations was distressing. In the older, such an air of unassuming goodness, in the younger a demeanour so intolerant, and domineering; those two sons were respectful and good to their father and mother; but toward the rest of the world—to natives, English, Americans, and other small fry—they displayed an astounding contempt.

The Berlin Concordia has just issued maxims of conduct to the German people, in a little book called “Let Germany Learn.” I cull two of them: “The soft corner in your heart for the foreigner will never give you his affection, but only his contempt!” And: “Everything depends on your own strength.”

It would be easy to make out some sort of case against any of the belligerent nations. It would not be easy to show that any nation save Germany was in that peculiar state of full-blooded self-confidence which upholds the Will to Power, and denies the Will to Equity.