the moment came to face the Franco-Russian alliance, they were to make a
magnificient dash at France and sweep her pieces off the great chess
board before the Russians had time to mobilize; and then return and
crush Russia, leaving the conquest of England for another day. This was
honestly as much as their heads could hold at one time; and they were
helplessly unable to consider whether the other conditions postulated by
Bernhardi were present, or indeed, in the excitement of their
schoolboyish imaginations, to remember whether he had postulated any at
all. And so they made their dash and put themselves in the wrong at
every point morally, besides making victory humanly impossible for
themselves militarily. That is the nemesis of Militarism: the Militarist
is thrown into a big game which he is too stupid to be able to play
successfully. Philip of Spain tried it 300 years ago; and the ruin he
brought on his empire has lasted to this day. He was so stupid that
though he believed himself to be the chosen instrument of God (as sure a
sign of a hopeless fool in a man who cannot see that every other man is
equally an instrument of that Power as it is a guarantee of wisdom and
goodwill in the man who respects his neighbor as himself) he attempted
to fight Drake on the assumption that a cannon was a weapon that no real
gentleman and good Catholic would condescend to handle. Louis XIV. tried
again two centuries ago, and, being a more frivolous fool, got beaten by
Marlborough and sent his great-grandson from the throne to the
guillotine. Napoleon tried it 100 years ago. He was more dangerous,
because he had prodigious personal ability and technical military skill;
and he started with the magnificent credential of the French Revolution.
All that carried him farther than the Spanish bigot or the French fop;
but he, too, accreted fools and knaves, and ended defeated in St. Helena
after pandering for twenty years to the appetite of idiots for glory and
bloodshed; waging war as "a great game"; and finding in a field strewn
with corpses "un beau spectacle." In short, as strong a magnet to fools