94 THE SCIENCE OF POWER 



armed peace. Before they reached Australia the 

 Armageddon was upon the nations, and the rulers 

 of the German people and the German Military 

 Staff were in the midst of the practical application 

 in the national policy of their country of the ideas 

 and principles discussed in this chapter. They had 

 embarked in that great experiment in the science 

 of social efficiency spoken of by Huxley, where the 

 subjects are peoples and types of civilization, but 

 where all deductions and verifications come too 

 late, and are only in time to be embodied in great 

 systems of history, of morality, and of religion. 1 

 It was a personal part of this vast climax that Mr. 

 Bateson should return to his native country in a 

 ship continuously in fear of the acts of the war in 

 progress, a war soon to be developed by Germany 

 along the lines denned and defended in the 

 Kriegsbrauch im Landkriege into a policy which was 

 to shock, astonish, and awe the world of civilization. 

 In following the great pagan revival in the history 

 of the Western intellect as here described the mind 

 feels that it indicates that kind of preliminary 

 elemental phase which separates two epoch c of 

 evolution. It is impossible to believe that the 

 doctrines discussed in this chapter, put forward in 

 the name of science under so many different phases in 



1 J. H. Huxley, Lay Sermons. 



