(2) In any case, the mistakes of the past do not entitle us to wash our hands of responsibilities in the present.  This war has shown that the non-self-governing parts of the Commonwealth are not, as our enemies supposed, a weakness to Great Britain in time of trouble, but a strength.  In other words, whatever may have happened in the past, Great Britain has now won the consent of the ruled to the fact—­not necessarily to the methods—­of British rule.  To use what is doubtless unduly constitutional language, we are now faced in India and elsewhere, not with a Revolutionary Movement, but with an Opposition.  That is a great incentive to further development.

BOOKS

THE PHILOSOPHY OF VIOLENCE

BERNHARDI, Germany and the Next War (2s.), has become familiar.  But this is only one application of a doctrine which has found expression in many spheres, as, for example, in the writings of the French Syndicalists, who claim to be copying the methods of Capitalism, and the principles of Bergson’s philosophy—­with what justification must be left to the reader to determine.  See G. SOREL, Reflexions sur la Violence (Paris, Marcel Riviere, 1910, 5 francs), and Sorel’s other writings.  “Bernhardi-ism” is, in fact, not a German product:  it has been before the public for some years under the name of “militancy,” in connection with various causes, though it has never been put into execution on so tremendous a scale as by the Prussian Government.  Nor is its philosophical basis to be found only, if at all, in Nietzsche.

KULTUR

The insistence on “Culture” as the main factor in the life and development of peoples is to be found in practically every German history, and in a great many non-German writers.  It has received an additional vogue from the development of the study of Sociology, which naturally seeks out, in tracing the development of societies in the past, the elements which lend themselves to measurement and description, and these are inevitably, from the nature of the evidence, rather “cultural” than moral.  It would be invidious to mention instances.

EDUCATION

For Dr. SADLER’S articles see p. 119, above.  See also PAULSEN, German Education:  Past and Present. 1908. 5s. net.

THE PRINCIPLE OF THE COMMONWEALTH

The best philosophical book on the relations of advanced and backward races is The Basis of Ascendancy:  a Discussion of certain Principles of Public Policy involved in the Development of the Southern States, by EDGAR GARDNER MURPHY (a clergyman living at Montgomery, Alabama) (1909, 6s. net).  Though written with reference to the peculiar American problem, the book has a far wider significance.  There is no good book which covers the ground either on India or the British Empire.  E.R.  BEVAN’S little volume on Indian Nationalism (2s. 6d. net) may be mentioned.  An article on India and the Empire in the Round Table for September 1912 is also worth mention (and worth reprinting).