IMAGERY IN SOCIAL GROWTH 337 



its own sake, but it is all the more detestable if the 

 real purpose is deliberately to create power in order 

 to insure efficiency in the robbery and destruction of 

 some other household. This larger criminal purpose 

 of Germany has been revealed. It was doomed to 

 failure because it was sure to destroy the very qualities 

 upon which its whole life depended. 



Militant kultur is a very simple and a very old 

 philosophy. It is the philosophy generally defended 

 and practised by those people who have achieved some 

 measure of so called success. It runs somewhat to 

 this effect. Progress is the creation of more intelligent 

 and powerful people. It is accomplished by provid- 

 ing for them better servants and helpers to do the nec- 

 essary, but less important things in life. The servants 

 are the weak and the stupid, the unfortunate, barbar- 

 ous, or undeveloped members of the human race, whom 

 nature benevolently provides for the born master and 

 leader of men. His function is to herd and house- 

 break these helpless ones, force them to feed out of his 

 hand, man his machines, and drive his chariots. 



Germany's militant kultur was the application of 

 this type of philosophy, on a magnificent, international 

 scale. It aimed to make German citizens more docile 

 and capable servants for a dominant ruling class; and 

 to make the world at large a fatter and easier prey for 

 Germany. It was an automatically self-destructive 

 process, because it tended to destroy the very instru- 

 ments and sources of her own social power. Like all 

 forms of parasitism and slavery, and "militant kultur" 

 is nothing more than that in principle, it inevitably 

 results in a disastrous unbalancing of the giving and 

 receiving processes, leading to the undue weakening 



