German imperialism, then, while it involves the same intellectual presuppositions, the same confusions, the same erroneous arguments, the same short-sighted ambitions, as the imperialism of other countries, exhibits them all in an extreme degree.  All peoples admire themselves.  But the self-adoration of Germans is so naive, so frank, so unqualified, as to seem sheerly ridiculous to more experienced nations.[1] The English and the French, too, believe their civilization to be the best in the world.  But English common-sense and French sanity would prevent them from announcing to other peoples that they proposed to conquer them, morally or materially, for their good.  All Jingoes admire and desire war.  But nowhere else in the modern world is to be found such a debauch of “romantic” enthusiasm, such a wilful blindness to all the realities of war, as Germany has manifested both before and since the outbreak of this world-catastrophe.  A reader of German newspapers and tracts gets at last a feeling of nausea at the very words Wir Deutsche, followed by the eternal Helden, Heldenthum, Heldenthat, and is inclined to thank God if he indeed belong to a nation sane enough to be composed of Haendler.

The very antithesis between Helden (heroes) and Haendler (hucksters), with which all Germany is ringing, is an illustration of the romantic quality that vitiates their intelligence.  In spite of the fact that they are one of the greatest trading and manufacturing nations of the world, and that precisely the fear of losing their trade and markets has been, as they constantly assert, a chief cause that has driven them to war, they speak as though Germany were a kind of knight-errant, innocent of all material ambitions, wandering through the world in the pure, disinterested service of God and man.  On the other hand, because England is a great commercial Power, they suppose that no Englishman lives for anything but profit.  Because they themselves have conscription, and have to fight or be shot, they infer that every German is a noble warrior.  Because the English volunteer, they assume that they only volunteer for their pay.  Germany, to them, is a hero clad in white armour, magnanimous, long-suffering, and invincible.  Other nations are little seedy figures in black coats, inspired exclusively by hatred and jealousy of the noble German, incapable of a generous emotion or an honourable act, and destined, by the judgment of history, to be saved, if they can be saved at all, by the great soul and dominating intellect of the Teuton.

It is in this intoxicating atmosphere of temperament and mood that the ideas and ambitions of German imperialists work and move.  They are essentially the same as those of imperialists in other countries.  Their philosophy of history assumes an endless series of wars, due to the inevitable expansion of rival States.  Their ethics means a belief in force and a disbelief in everything else.  Their science is a crude misapplication