origin which has been offered to the British public since the war--there
is a momentary illusion, "That is Germany!" Of course it is not, any more
than the _Morning Post_ or the _National Review_ is England. Germans, in
fact, during recent years have taken a prominent place in pacifism as well
as in imperialism. Men like Schücking and Quidde and Fried are at least as
well known as men like Treitschke and Bernhardi. Opinion in Germany, as in
every other country, has been various and conflicting. And the pacific
tendencies have been better organized, if not more active, there than
elsewhere, for they have been associated with the huge and disciplined
forces of the Social-Democrats. Indeed, the mass of the people, left
alone, is everywhere pacific. I do not forget the very important fact
that German education, elementary and higher, has been deliberately
directed to inculcate patriotic feeling, that the doctrine of armed
force as the highest manifestation of the State has been industriously
propagated by the authorities, and that the unification of Germany by
force has given to the cult of force a meaning and a popularity probably
unknown in any other country. But in most men, for good or for evil, the
lessons of education can be quickly obliterated by the experience of life.
In particular, the mass of the people everywhere, face to face with the
necessities of existence, knowing what it is to work and to struggle, to
co-operate and to compete, to suffer and to relieve suffering, though they
may be less well-informed than the instructed classes, are also less liable
to obsession by abstractions. They see little, but they see it straight.
And though, being men, with the long animal inheritance of men behind them,
their passions may be roused by any cry of battle, though they are the
fore-ordained dupes of those who direct the policy of nations, yet it is
not their initiative that originates wars. They do not desire conquest,
they do not trouble about "race" or chatter about the "survival of the
fittest." It is their own needs, which are also the vital needs of society,
that preoccupy their thoughts; and it is real goods that direct and inspire