GEKMAN PHILOSOPHY IN BRINGING ABOUT THE GREAT WAR. 113 



sion on this subject this session, and invited me to open it. The 

 form which my remarks will take is that of considerations on 

 two works of authority which are before the public, the treatise 

 l>y rrniVssur Muirhead of Birmingham, called Gt rman Ph Uosophy 

 and the War t and the account of the same which is to be found 

 in the popular work of Dr. Thomas Smith, called The Soul of 

 German]/. Both these writers furnish valuable guidance; and 

 Dr. Smith, besides profound acquaintance with German litera- 

 ture, has the advantage of having lived for many years in 

 Germany as a university professor, whence he is better able 

 than most to judge what works have really influenced German 

 opinion. He evidently agrees besides with those of the ancients- 

 who rejected the maxim which bids us treat our friends as 

 potential enemies and our enemies as potential friends. For 

 his account of the German soul is painted in the blackest 

 colours. 



These two authorities agree in eliminating the name of 

 Bernhardt as the spokesman of the military party, and as in 

 general little read or regarded in Germany outside that party ; 

 and in the powerfully written work J Accuse extracts were 

 given from this author's books as a semi-official statement of the 

 intentions and aims of the German Government. Dr. Smith 

 observes that Bernhardi's book was regarded in German mili- 

 tary circles as a clumsy betrayal of official designs, and he 

 doubts whether one in a thousand Germans had heard 

 Bernhardi's name before the War. A story was current in its- 

 early months that a neutral who was present at a meeting of 

 theologians in Berlin found the name of Bernhardt so familiar 

 then in England, was unknown to men of high eminence in the 

 literary world of the German capital. 



The name of Treitschke, who died in 1896, was indeed known 

 in historical circles throughout Europe before the War, and 

 though in these quickly moving times it might seem something- 

 like an anachronism to make a man responsible for a War that 

 broke out eighteen years after his demise. Dr. Smith points out 

 that Treitschke's works are used as class-books in the schools, 

 whence every educated German comes under his influence. The 

 figures which he gives are interesting : in 1911 there were over 

 300,000 German boys between the ages of ten and twenty in 

 the State secondary schools and 212,000 pupils in secondary 

 schools for girls. If Treitschke's works were put into the hands 

 of all these students, it is reasonable to suppose that his influ- 

 ence spread widely over the German nation. Still, in his case, 

 as in that of Bernhardi, we have rather an exponent of official 



I 



