130 THE SCIENCE OF POWER 



Germany in the creation and by the imposition 

 on the rising generation of the collective idealisms 

 of h r nationality is the greatest event in modern 

 history. It is a record, it is true, of immense power 

 misdirected to atavistic ends. But this fact does 

 not take from its significance. The true app'iea- 

 tion of the lesson which it contains has yet to come 

 within the full vision of civilization. It is exactly 

 the lesson which I prophesied in the Herbert Sp ncer 

 Lecture to the University of Oxford in 1908 that 

 modern Germany had to deliver to the world. 1 

 It has become a lesson which must now, as a matter 

 O' life and death, be applied by civilization as soon 

 as it is apprehended. It is, for this reason, of vital 

 importance to concentrate attention on the mech- 

 anism of the process as it is to be seen actually in 

 being. 



In that process in modern Germany by which the 

 psychology of a whole people was changed in a 

 generation the fundamental fact to be grasped is 

 that the seat and centre of the vast experiment 

 throughout the whole period of accomplishment 

 was in the mind of the young. It was the German 

 educational system which created the psychology 

 Which carried modern Germany into the world war 

 of 1914 with all its far-reaching consequences. The 



1 Individualism and After, pp. 30-1. 



