164 THE SCIENCE OF POWER 



is as if we were ushered suddenly into another 

 world. In the address at Potsdam in 1891, when 

 the feeling against socialists ran high, these same 

 Christian soldiers were told that " more and more 

 unbelief and discontent raise their heads in the 

 Fatherland, and it may come to pass that you will 

 have to shoot down or stab your own relatives and 

 brothers. Then seal your loyalty with your heart's 

 blood ! " l This was the pronouncement which 

 roused Tolstoy to describe as an " abyss of de- 

 gradation " the condition which the recruits reached 

 when they promised obedience. And he called 

 the world to witness the paralysing self-contradic- 

 tion and self-stultification of the West, when " men 

 Christians, liberals, cultured men of our time, all 

 of them are not only not provoked by this insult, 

 but do not even notice it." 2 



The heredity of the fight allied to uncontrolled 

 power in the mind of the West is capable of pro- 

 ducing results so extreme that without the facts in 

 evidence they could scarcely have been conceived. 

 In his address at Bremen in March 1905 on the 

 mission of Germany, the Emperor put aside on 

 behalf of the German nation all dreams of empty 

 world empire. " I have made a vow, " he continued, 

 *' never to strive for an empty world dominion. 

 1 op. cit. op. dt. 



