conqueror--that is, the direction of his force for the time being:
force, then, and right are the same thing; and if force is pleased to
take a new direction, the old right becomes ancient history and the
treaty, which backed it with a solemn undertaking, no more than a
scrap of paper. Thus Germany, struck with wonder in presence of her
victories, of the brute force which had been their means, of the
material prosperity which was the outcome, translated her amazement
into an idea. And see how, at the call of this idea, a thousand
thoughts, as if awaked from slumber, and shaking off the dust of
libraries, came rushing in from every side--thoughts which Germany had
suffered to sleep among her poets and philosophers, every one which
could lend a seductive or striking form to a conviction already made!
Henceforth German imperialism had a theory of its own. Taught in
schools and universities, it easily moulded to itself a nation already
broken-in to passive obedience and having no loftier ideal wherewith
to oppose the official doctrine. Many persons have explained the
aberrations of German policy as due to that theory. For my part, I see
in it nothing more than a philosophy doomed to translate into ideas
what was, in its essence, insatiable ambition and will perverted by
pride. The doctrine is an effect rather than a cause; and should the
day come when Germany, conscious of her moral humiliation, shall say,
to excuse herself, that she had trusted herself too much to certain
theories, that an error of judgment is not a crime, it will then be
necessary to remind her that her philosophy was simply a translation
into intellectual terms of her brutality, her appetites, and her
vices. So, too, in most cases, doctrines are the means by which
nations and individuals seek to explain what they are and what they
do. Germany, having finally become a predatory nation, invokes Hegel
as witness; just as a Germany enamoured of moral beauty would have
declared herself faithful to Kant, just as a sentimental Germany would