It was wide of the mark, therefore, to attribute that which bears the stamp “made in Germany” to England.  Bernhardi and the Crown Prince with their thousands of officers and the multitudes in the ranks to whom Nietzsche has become an inspiring motive are not to be construed as English surely.  Nor does the English “culture,” so far as the present writer is informed, contain a superman, unless it be Bernard Shaw!  English people have to import “beyond good and evil” philosophy, and as historians of thought Profs.  Eucken and Haeckel must know that it has never had a foothold there.  Had it been “brutal national egoism, knowing no rights of others,” which motivated Britain, she would not now have gone to war—­in order that she might profit finally by the inevitable exhaustion of the Continent.  And having taken the clear stand she has, what but good-will and the consciousness of a just cause brought support and sacrifice from the hands and lives of her grateful peoples all over the earth?  Would brutality have done it?  The same question might be asked concerning France’s empire from which she derives chiefly the consciousness of an extending civilization.

The Claims of German Culture.

A word more should be added concerning the condescending tone generally of the exponents of German culture and more specifically that of the distinguished writers of the circular letter.  They had up to the present continued to hope for growth in English literary and scientific development.  Before this dismal egoism got the upper hand the English people really and truly possessed some noble traits and so forth.  As for Russian culture, supposedly including its science and literature, music, architecture and the rest, it is all effaced by a single “barbarism”!  The implication of such an attitude and such words is that the Kremlin or Rheims, Shakespeare and Rembrandt, Michaelangelo, Darwin, Spinoza and the treasures of Louvain might be easily paralleled or surpassed by German cathedrals, German sculpture, German paintings, German literature and so forth.  It is not our present purpose to dispute the claim, but only to remind the Teutons that in France and Belgium they have declared war, not indeed upon supermen, but upon many gentlemen and some worthy fruits of their spirits, and that they have destroyed much which formerly enriched the life of the world.

It is the claim of some objective German writers that a modicum of modesty would prove the most substantial contribution to Teutonic civilization.  Defeat of German arms might, therefore, prove a blessing to the self-lauded culture as well as call a halt to the brutal science of Krupps.  As instances of authors mentioned above, a passage from the lamented Friedrich Paulsen’s “System der Ethic” (Page 582) may, justly, be cited:  “Insolence still continues to impress the average German.  The spirit of English scientific intercourse forms a highly pleasing contrast to the German habit.