development of societies, nations, and races, is war. The internal
development, the intrasocial struggle, is man's daily work--the struggle
of thoughts, feelings, wishes, sciences, activities. The outward
development, the supersocial struggle, is the sanguinary struggle of
nations--war. In what does the creative power of this struggle consist?
In growth and decay, in the victory of the one factor and in the defeat
of the other! This struggle is a creator, since it eliminates." [B]

[Footnote B: Clauss Wagner, "Der Krieg als schaffendes Weltprinzip."]

That social system in which the most efficient personalities possess the
greatest influence will show the greatest vitality in the intrasocial
struggle. In the extrasocial struggle, in war, that nation will conquer
which can throw into the scale the greatest physical, mental, moral,
material, and political power, and is therefore the best able to defend
itself. War will furnish such a nation with favourable vital conditions,
enlarged possibilities of expansion and widened influence, and thus
promote the progress of mankind; for it is clear that those intellectual
and moral factors which insure superiority in war are also those which
render possible a general progressive development. They confer victory
because the elements of progress are latent in them. Without war,
inferior or decaying races would easily choke the growth of healthy
budding elements, and a universal decadence would follow. "War," says A.
W. von Schlegel, "is as necessary as the struggle of the elements in
Nature."

Now, it is, of course, an obvious fact that a peaceful rivalry may exist
between peoples and States, like that between the fellow-members of a
society, in all departments of civilized life--a struggle which need not
always degenerate Into war. Struggle and war are not identical. This