579th ORDIXARY GENERAL MEETING. 



EELD IN COMMITTED ROOM B, Til E CENTRAL HALL, 

 WESTMINSTER, ON MONDAY, APRIL 3rd, 1916, 



The Rev. H. J. R. Makston, M.A., in the Chair. 



The Minutes of the preceding Meeting were read and confirmed. 



The Secretary announced that Col. J. E. Broadbent, C.B., R.E., 

 Associate of the Institute, had been elected a Member. 



The Chairman asked the Rev. D. S. Margoliouth, Laudian Professor 

 of Arabic in the University of Oxford, to address the Meeting on "The 

 Influence of German Philosophy in bringing about the Great War." 



THE INFLUENCE OF GERMAN PHILOSOPHY IN 

 BRINGING ABOUT THE GREAT WAR. By the 

 Rev. D. S. Margoliouth, D.Litt., F.B.A., Laudian Professor 

 of Arabic in the University of Oxford. 



HEN some unexpected disaster befalls the world there is 



a general desire to find a reason for it, and men are 

 often for a time satisfied with causes which are not really 

 adequate to the result. Thus Carlyle tells us* that the 

 French Revolution was attributed by some thinkers to Queen 

 Marie Antoinette's want of etiquette ; once, when her carriage 

 broke down, she entered a hackney-coach ; she would walk, too> 

 at Trianon in mere straw hat and perhaps muslin gown. Hence, 

 the knot of etiquette being loosed, the frame of society broke 

 up, and those astonishing horrors of the French Revolution 

 supervened. The Reign of Terror, according to this, was pro- 

 duced by Marie Antoinette's straw hat and muslin gown ! 

 Now the Kaiser's ultimatum, which transformed a peaceful and 

 progressive world into a scene of internecine strife and desola- 

 tion, with a general relapse into savagery, was expected to about 

 the same extent as the French Revolution was expected ; only 

 to the furthest sighted and the best informed did it fail to come 

 as a complete surprise. Among the causes popularly assigned 

 is the corruption of the German mind by philosophers, of 

 whom three have been generally named — Bernhardi, the 



AT 4.30 P.M. 



* The Diamond Necklace in Miscellaneous Essays. 



