88 THE SCIENCE OF POWER 



as Mendelian segregation rising to the sterilization 

 of certain classes of criminals, were all in keeping 

 with the spirit of these two demands. 



Now the characteristic mark in history for all 

 time of the modern Prussian school of militarism 

 will be recognized to be this. Its Professors gradu- 

 ally convinced themselves and then a whole people 

 that the principal business of the State is the making 

 of war. They took the Darwinian standard of 

 efficiency as it prevailed in the childhood of the 

 world, and boldly applied it to politics and war, 

 imagining this primitive conception to represent 

 the science of efficiency in civilization. They 

 returned thereby to the standards of the pagan 

 spMt of the West, and made force successfully 

 applied in aggressive war the basis of Right in 

 civilization. So far all has been clear. 



But there was a second and wider conception 

 involved in this doctrine of war as the principal 

 business of the State which Treitschke at first and 

 then the leaders of modern Germany deliberately 

 adopted. Wars of conquest are but exceptional 

 incidents in the life of civilization. The second 

 and more significant conception was that it is 

 the economic exploitation of the world under 

 the conditions of modern business and commerce 

 which constitutes the permanent conditions of war. 



