44 THEOLOGY AND THE WAR 



whatever quantities it may stand for in any given equation. 

 All this is quite rudimentary, and would not be worth 

 repeating, were it not that I have a moral to draw. I suggest 

 that the anthropomorphic god-idea is not a harmless infirmity 

 of human thought, but a very noxious fallacy, which is 

 largely responsible for the calamities the world is at present 

 enduring. I suggest that the persistence of this god-idea is 

 mainly instrumental in preventing people from recognizing 

 what an indefensible anachronism war has become. 



A typical example of its power for evil is to be found in 

 Treitschke's now famous saying, " God will see to it that war 

 constantly recurs as a drastic medicine for the human race." 

 Treitschke was the most shameless of all anthropomorphists. 

 He concentrated all his own prejudices, vanities, and even 

 caprices, in an imaginary being whom he called God ; and he 

 was amply justified in declaring that an omnipotent Heinrich 

 von Treitschke would see to it that war should constantly 

 recur, at any rate until Prussia had conquered the world. 

 Sensible men, of course, are quite sure that God, whatever he 

 may be, is not an omnipotent Heinrich von Treitschke ; but 

 one fanatical phrasemonger under the dominion of this delu- 

 sion can do more harm than a thousand sensible men can 

 undo. And when a similar delusion takes possession of a 

 man who is not merely a Prussian professor, but a hereditary, 

 anointed War-Lord, who can doubt that calamity is inevit- 

 able ? We laugh at the German Emperor and his appeals to 

 his " alte gute Gott " ; but how many millions of people know 

 to their cost that it is no laughing matter ! In a very real 

 nay, in an ultimate sense, it is this u alte gute Gott" that 

 has made the war. That is one thing among many others 

 that English apologists for Germany forget. They forget 

 that from the highest to the lowest at any rate, to the lowest 

 professor, preacher, and publicist the Germans almost to 

 a man believed in a God who had declared that war was the 

 noblest of human activities, and was the appointed instrument 

 through which the beneficent German spirit was to bring 

 salvation to an ailing world. It is quite amazing to find 

 as I have found in the course of much recent reading how 

 German war literature is impregnated with this idea. One 

 thought of Germany before the war as a rather godless 

 country; and so, indeed, it was. But the war has revealed 

 the fact that every German in his heart believed in a German 

 war-god, the concentrated essence of all the prejudices and 

 vanities begotten by the national experience from Mollwitz 



