Germany, or more precisely Prussia, with its ancient genius for
warfare, has in the present war taken the decisive step in initiating
the abolition of that incongruity by placing warfare definitely on the
basis of scientific barbarism. To do this is, in a sense, we must
remember, not a step backwards, but a step forward. It involved the
recognition of the fact that War is not a game to be played for its own
sake, by a professional caste, in accordance with fixed rules which it
would be dishonourable to break, but a method, carried out by the whole
organised manhood of the nation, of effectively attaining an end
desired by the State, in accordance with the famous statement of
Clausewitz that war is State policy continued by a different method. If
by the chivalrous method of old, which was indeed in large part still
their own method in the previous Franco-German war, the Germans had
resisted the temptation to violate the neutrality of Luxemburg and
Belgium in order to rush behind the French defences, and had battered
instead at the Gap of Belfort, they would have won the sympathy of the
world, but they certainly would not have won the possession of the
greater part of Belgium and a third part of France. It has not alone
been military instinct which has impelled Germany on the new course
thus inaugurated. We see here the final outcome of a reaction against
ancient Teutonic sentimentality which the insight of Goldwin Smith
clearly discerned forty years ago.[5] Humane sentiments and civilised
traditions, under the moulding hand of Prussian leaders of Kultur,
have been slowly but firmly subordinated to a political realism which,
in the military sphere, means a masterly efficiency in the aim of
crushing the foe by overwhelming force combined with panic-striking
"frightfulness." In this conception, that only is moral which served
these ends. The horror which this "frightfulness" may be expected to
arouse, even among neutral nations, is from the German point of view a
tribute of homage.