POSITION IN THE WEST 163 



born for one another . . . you are now about to 

 swear to me the oath of fidelity and obedience, and 

 1 vow that I shall ever be mindful of the fact that 

 the eyes of my forefathers look down upon me from 

 that other world, and that I one day shall have to 

 render up to them an account of the fame and the 

 honour of the army." 1 



In the spirit of this extraordinary document the 

 atmosphere of the modern West falls away from us 

 as if it had never existed. The reader would experi- 

 ence no surprise if, unconscious of its historical 

 associations, he were informed that it was the record 

 of a speech of some ruler of men to his army made 

 anywhere on this planet ten thousand years ago. 



This conflict of standards in which the Western 

 heredity of the fight in the individual struggles with 

 and at times completely dominates the spirit of the 

 Christian religion is visible continuously in almost 

 every page of this notable record. Again and again 

 in the Emperor's addresses throughout his reign 

 the spirit of the Christian religion appears 'to be 

 uppermost. The standards of Christianity are held 

 high before the German nation as ideals. His 

 soldiers, he tells them, as in the address on ad- 

 ministering the oath to recruits in Berlin in 1897, 

 must be good Christians. But ever and again it 

 1 op. tit. op. ctt 



