exalted by the Germans as a primal duty, and has, indeed, been advanced
by them as their principal claim to undertake the government of the
world.

This extreme nationalism, this unwillingness to feel any sympathy for
other peoples, or to show them any consideration, has stupefied and
blinded the Germans. One of the heaviest charges that can be brought
against them is that they have seen no virtue in France, I do not ask
that they shall interrupt the War to express admiration for their
enemies: I am speaking of the time before the War. France is the chief
modern inheritor of that great Roman civilization which found us painted
savages, and made us into citizens of the world. The French mind, it is
admitted, and admitted most readily by the most intelligent men, is
quick and delicate and perceptive, surer and clearer in its operation
than the average European mind. Yet the Germans, infatuated with a
belief in their own numbers and their own brute strength, have dared to
express contempt for the genius of France. A contempt for foreigners is
common enough among the vulgar and unthinking of all nations, but I do
not believe that you will find anywhere but in Germany a large number of
men trained in the learned professions who are so besotted by vanity as
to deny to France her place in the vanguard of civilization. These louts
cannot be informed or argued with; they are interested in no one but
themselves, and naked self-assertion is their only idea of political
argument. Treitschke, who was for twenty years Professor of History at
Berlin, and who did perhaps more than any other man to build up the
modern German creed, has crystallized German politics in a single
sentence. 'War', he says, 'is politics _par excellence_,' that is to
say, politics at their purest and highest. Our political doctrine, if it
must be put in as brief a form, would be better expressed in the
sentence, 'War is the failure of politics'.