112 PK0F. D. S. MAEGOLIOCTH, D.LITT., ON THE INFLUENCE OF 



apostle of German militarism: Treitschke, the prophet of 

 Prussian Imperialism ; and Nietzsche, the inventor of the 

 Superman, the champion of unrestrained passion. Booksellers 

 inform us that the interest in these personages and their 

 opinions has of late cooled in this country : possibly their guilt 

 is so thoroughly ascertained that further discussion of the 

 matter is unnecessary ; and, indeed, in a book which is likely to 

 count as one of the curiosities of the War, called War Letters 

 from a Living Dead Man* the ghost of Nietzsche is introduced 

 confessing as follows : I hoc* corrupted a whole people, and led 

 them to their rain; I thought to remedy tin ir spinel essness, and, 

 following me with characteristic thoroughness, they have become 

 all spine ; they have neith r head nor bom Is. I preached Beyond 

 Man ; they have- practised below man. After severe handling by 

 his cross-examiner, Nietzsche's ghost is dismissed with an order 

 to be born again and teach a different gospel. It should be 

 added that the authoress does not assert positively that this 

 order will be obeyed. In the following interview the Prince of 

 Darkness acknowledges that it was he who inspired Nietzsche 

 to preach Beyond Man to the Germans, who could only choose 

 evil when they believed themselves to be strong. In the most 

 recent treatise which I have seen on this subject (Religion in 

 Europ* and th. World Crisis, by the Piev. C. E. Osborne) 

 Nietzsche, with Treitschke and Bernbardi, plays an important 

 part, but the author states expressly that " Nietzsche was in 

 reality no direct cause of the War, even in the sense in which a 

 man's ideals cause a nation's action, for he disliked the present 

 Kaiser ; he wrote rudely of Treitschke, the real protagonist of 

 the Hohenzollerns ; he hated Bismarck ; he loathed Prussia, 

 and was by race partly a Slav." This author then shifts the 

 blame from Nietzsche's shoulders to those of Treitschke. In 

 another publication of the last few weeks (Degenerate Germany, 

 by Henry de Halsalle) neither of these writers obtains more 

 than a passing mention, the author being concerned with 

 demonstrating the general depravity of the German character, 

 so far as it can be historically traced. Possibly most of us 

 have got to regard the War so much as our normal environment 

 that we have ceased to trouble about its causes ; the beginning 

 now lies in the almost-forgotten past, and our interest is con- 

 centrated on the possibility of an end. Still, as the Philosophical 

 8<»:i:ty of Gnat Britain, this Institute desired to have a discus- 



* By Elsa Barker Eider, 1915, p. 276. 



