GREAT PAGAN RETROGRESSION 01 



We have to observe in modern Germany, says 

 a recent writer, a grim development, " how pro- 

 fessor after professor, whether merely truculent like 

 Treitschke or sedate and comparatively mild-spoken 

 like professors of the school of Ranke and Delbrtick, 

 have always come nearer and nearer to the doctrine 

 of force until finally the blinding light of the argu- 

 ment that the first object of the State is the waging 

 of war bursts upon the professorial brain." l 



It was Darwinism pure and simple, embodied in 

 the State. " If A was able to kill B before B killed 

 A, then A survived. And it would become the 

 destiny of the race to become a race of As inherit- 

 ing A's qualities." 2 This in actual effect became in 

 large measure the national policy and the national 

 idealism of a great people for two generations in our 

 time. And the theory of Right which accompanied it 

 was simply that those who held the power of the State 

 were not bound by any code of morality save that 

 dictated by the interests of the State thus resting 

 on successful war. 



In all these developments the influence of Nietzsche 

 on his tune was profound. It exceeded in its own 

 way even the influence of Treitschke's lectures 

 and of Wagner's music. Nationalism, militarism, 



1 F. M. Hueffer, op. cit., Pt. I. chap. 11. iv. 

 * Walter Bagehot, op. cit. 



