256 THE SCIENCE OF POWER 



years ago was as words fallen on sand. Even 

 William James, who listened to the lecture and 

 who spoke to me in the name of the United States, 

 took me to task afterwards for this prophecy. 



The world which existed then has been wiped 

 out of our Western age as if a sponge had closed its 

 record in history. Its ruling principles have been 

 deposed. The example of organized Power given 

 by Germany in the world war which began in 1914 

 has changed for ever the direction of the main 

 currents of Western history. It was an example of 

 stupendous power misconceived and misdirected to 

 the revival in the West of the ideals of Power char- 

 acteristic of the pagan past. But the significance 

 of the example remains for ever in the lesson 

 which was given to the world as to the almost 

 superhuman reach of organized Power based on the 

 emotion of the ideal in the collective mind. 



The message which is conveyed to civilization in 

 this war is in all its fundamental meaning the 

 message which I attempted to deliver to Oxford in 

 1908, namely, that Power in the future of the world 

 will be to the peoples who find the true application 

 of the lessons of which the first stages have been 

 displayed in the history of modern Prussia. In this 

 lesson, the first step is to the knowledge that 

 Power in the future of civilization is the science 



