Man can never hope to change his physical necessities, and therefore his
moral nature must always remain the same in essence, if not in form. As
Washington truly said, "The motives which predominate most in human
affairs are self-love and self-interest," and "nothing binds one country
or one state to another but interest."

If, then, it be true, that man is an automatic animal moving always along
the paths of least resistance toward predetermined ends, it cannot fail to
be useful to us in the present emergency to mark, as distinctly as we can,
the causes which impelled Germany, at a certain point in her career, to
choose the paths which led to her destruction rather than those which, at
the first blush, promised as well, and which seemed to be equally as easy
and alluring. And we may possibly, by this process, expose certain
phenomena which may profit us, since such an examination may help us to
estimate what avenues are like to prove ultimately the least resistant.

Throughout the Middle Ages North Germany, which is the region whereof
Berlin is the capital, enjoyed relatively little prosperity, because
Brandenburg, for example, lay beyond the zone of those main trade routes
which, before the advent of railways, served as the arteries of the
eastern trade. Not until after the opening of the Industrial Revolution in
England, did that condition alter. Nor even then did a change come rapidly
because of the inertia of the Russian people. Nevertheless, as the Russian
railway system developed, Berlin one day found herself standing, as it
were, at the apex of a vast triangle whose boundaries are, roughly,
indicated by the position of Berlin itself, Petersburg, Warsaw, Moscow,
Kiev, and the Ukraine. Beyond Berlin the stream of traffic flowed to
Hamburg and thence found vent in America, as a terminus. Great Britain,
more especially, demanded food, and food passed by sea from Odessa. Hence