GREAT PAGAN RETROGRESSION 68 



everywhere the same. The development accom- 

 panying it was marked by the international phase 

 so accurately described in the quotation given in the 

 previous chapter from the Westminster Gazette in 

 which that journal saw the diplomacy of the leading 

 European nations openly reverting to the principles 

 of savagery. The doctrine that Right was ulti- 

 mately based solely on military strength, and that 

 military power was the supreme test of fitness and 

 efficiency amongst civilized nations, was simul- 

 taneously being rapidly developed in textbooks of 

 political and military science in Germany : that 

 the Right of a State turns not on international 

 morality, but " simply and solely on power and 

 expediency " ; l that treaties and national engage- 

 ments ceased to be binding and became " scraps of 

 paper " when they could no longer be supported 

 by the sword, were all the culminating steps by 

 which the doctrine that irresistible force was the 

 sole test of fitness brought the world to the brink 

 of the cataclysm which plunged nine hundred millions 

 of the human race into war in 1914. 



The pagan doctrine of force as the supreme test 

 of efficiency in the world which had come out thus 

 naked and unabashed in modern Germany and 

 which was moving towards its organized expression 



1 Bernhardi, Germany and the Next War, chap. v. 



