POSITION IN THE WEST 161 



produces this contradiction pervades all phases of 

 Western life, political and economic alike. It has 

 sterilized for centuries every attempt to apply the 

 emotion of the ideal in the service jof civilization. 

 Any detached mind which takes its way through 

 the notable charters, speeches, bulls, greater State 

 documents, and social pronouncements in which the 

 vital decisions of the West have been put on record, 

 will receive this conviction with overwhelming 

 strength. The influence, moreover, of the blighting 

 cause which has prevented the West from utilizing 

 the function of the emotion of the ideal in the 

 service of civilization has never been more powerful 

 and more all-pervading than in the time in which we 

 are living. 



For two generations past the dominant feature of 

 the history of the West has been nothing else than 

 the struggle of the comparatively small class who 

 have held military power in modern Germany against 

 the soul of the world. History has produced no 

 more striking set of documents than those in which 

 the phases of this gigantic conflict are recorded. 

 And there are no more characteristic documents in 

 this collection than the public utterances made during 

 his reign of the Emperor William II. It would be 

 impossible to have in evidence in more impressive 



form than in these addresses the clash of the stand- 

 ii 



