THEOLOGY AND THE WAR 45 



to Sedan. And the Kaiser, as he had repeatedly stated even 

 before the war, believes in an intimate personal relation 

 between himself and this God, the sanctifier of his supreme 

 will, the inspirer of all his sayings and doings. It may 

 sound paradoxical, but what we are fighting against is, in 

 the last analysis, that most inept of superstitions the divine 

 right of kings. It is true that, in such a fight, Russia is an 

 odd ally; but it is none the less true that Germany is the 

 only nation of Western Europe in which the superstition 

 survives, and that, if the war does not put an end to it, the 

 world will have agonized in vain. For the king who believes 

 his right divine is almost bound to believe that it is conferred 

 upon him by a war-god, who has, by an unalterable decree, 

 made organized slaughter one of the supreme functions of 

 kingship. The two superstitions belong to exactly the same 

 phase of mental development, and arise from the same habit 

 of seeing in God a mere magnified projection of our own 

 prejudices. 



But it is, of course, not only in Germany that war is 

 excused, palliated, almost sanctified, on the ground of its 

 being "the will of God." The Germans differ from other 

 people in claiming a peculiar property in the war-god, and 

 supposing themselves his special favourites, his chosen 

 people. This is a consequence, or a symptom, of the 

 peculiarly strong tribal instinct which has long prevailed 

 among them the instinct which, even in an anti-Prussian 

 writer like Heine, gives to the word " deutsch " a note of 

 intimate, exclusive affection, quite different from any senti- 

 ment aroused by the word "English" or " Fran9ais " or 

 "Italiano." Even the sceptic and cosmopolitan in Germany 

 believes in his heart that his race is the salt of the earth. 

 National vanity is prevalent enough in other countries, but 

 it is neither so universal nor so nai've in its manifestations as 

 it is among the Germans. Accordingly, we do not speak of 

 an English, French, or Italian God. We are content to 

 share our God with other people. Nevertheless, we make 

 God responsible for the war ; we talk of it as the work of his 

 inscrutable Providence ; and some of us even try to make 

 out, quite in the German spirit, that it is a purifying ordeal, 

 designed for the ennoblement, the rejuvenation of the race. 

 That sort of nonsense is well answered, in terms of theology, 

 by one German theologian, F. W. Foerster, who has managed, 

 even in the tempest and whirlwind of bellicose passion, to 

 preserve a certain modicum of common sense. He says : 



