LAND AND WATER. 
November 6, igj^. 
at sra ; ajid. while s1k> may act thus, all her com- 
merce at sea i^ to remain as free in time of war as 
all commerce is in time of peace." 
The Imperial Chancellor's conclusion is a 
non sequititr. It does not follow upon his 
laborious earlier arj^uments, nay it clashes sharplv 
with them. It is the same conclusion as that of 
the lire-eaters, who are the more logical inasmuch 
as they will have none of the Chancellor's 
jjremises. The cautious politique has been infected 
with the same disease as the fanatics. 
THE FANATICS. 
Who are the fanatics ? Perhaps three-fourths 
of the German people. It is more difficult to 
determine the chief fount of the virus. It is not 
to be found in the National Liberal and Agrarian 
stalwarts, who present memorials demanding the 
annexation of half Europe. They are merely 
stupid people, svxollen with the " vainglory of 
success. It is probably not to be found to an\^ 
great extent in the Army itself. Its chiefs are 
professional zealots, who do not, as a rule, trouble 
their heads about grandiose political theories. 
Nor is it to be traced to the coterie of Admiral 
von Tirpitz, for whom Count zu Reventlow plays in 
the press the part of dancing dervish. The Ger- 
man Navy chiefs have no ^•ictories to console 
themselves with, and their wqunded pride makes 
them vindictive and relentless enemies, soothing 
t])eir chagrin with violent words. But that is an 
intelligible human motive. 
It is more likely that history will put the 
blame upon a class which Britain is apt to overlook 
m the enumeration of her enemies— the German 
high financial and industrial circles, with their 
obedient satelUtes, the University Professors. 
This class is a comparatively new phenomenon in 
Germany. For the most part humbly born and 
often Jewish in blood, it has found itself exalted 
from social ostracism to the confidence of the 
Court and a chief voice in the national Councils 
It has been astonishingly successful. The industry 
Gi the German people exploited by these entre- 
ptenenrs has produced results which might well 
le^ye the promoters dizzy. The standard of 
livuig has changed, and extravagant expenditure 
on luxury has become the fashion among in- 
dustrial magnates ; a fashion which is reproduced 
in thf bourgeois Hfe of the cities. Being genuine 
noiiveaiix nches they have no tradition to conform 
to, no perspective to order their outlook on the 
'^'''^}^- J^^^ }'^Sdoms of the earth have fallen 
k^'ci ' Jeshurun, they wax fat and 
Some of the wiser brains among the magnates 
have a reason of policy behind their megalomania. 
rhey see ttiat nothing short of a colossal and undis- 
puted vurtoiy can safeguard their supremacy. 
Unless Germany can pay her war bills with 
indemnities unimagined before in history there 
will be bankruptcy to face, bankruptcy which at 
the best will mean a decade of lean years The 
brightest inilitary glory will not restore their 
overseas triie or redeem the wastes of paper 
currency. ^ generation of hard living and pre- 
paration or. a further effort, which anything less 
han ab.solu^e xictory must involve, has no terrors 
loi the hardier souls of the Army or the ancient 
sqi-.rearchy. But it seems the end 'of ail thinj^s " 
(> the vainglorious kings of German trade. Thev 
l-a\s become fanatics, partly from policy and 
partl>- because they have the disease :^^;i^ th^ir 
blood. . I-.!- ,.,n.., 
They have strong allies in the academic class. 
Not all, for there are many professors who have 
sounded a note of warning and one or two have 
had the courage to speak unpopular truths. But 
the intense specialisation of German scholarship 
and science does not tend to produce minds witli 
a high sense of proportion, and sedentary folk 
have at all times been inclined to blow a louder 
trumpet than men of action and affairs. What 
Senancour called le vulgaire des sages, the 
absorption in dreams and theories to which 
pedants are prone, is a characteristic of the great 
bulk of the German teaching profession. 
What is the fanaticism which the politiques 
repudiate and to which nevertheless they have 
fallen victims ? It is best described, perhaps, by 
the French phrase, folic de grandeur. As such it 
must be clearly distinguished from that other 
\-ice of success, la gloire. The greatest leaders in 
history -Julius Ciesar, Charlemagne, Cromwell, 
Gustavus Adolphus, Washington — have striven for 
a profound political and religious ideal which made 
mere fame of no account in their eyes. (Others, like 
Alexander, have been possessed by a passion for 
glory, and have blazed like comets across the 
world. The most perfect example is Charles XII. 
of Sweden, who in his short career of nineteen 
years followed glory alone, and drew no material 
benefit from his conquests. In his old clothes he 
shook down monarchies and won thrones for 
other people. Glory may be a futile quest, but it 
has a splendour and generosity which raise it 
beyond the level of low and earthy things. It is 
to the end of time an infirmity of minds which 
are not ignoble. 
But grandeur is a perversion, an offence 
against our essential humanity. It may be the 
degeneration of a genius like Napoleon, but more 
often it is the illusion of excited mediocrities. 
It is of the earth earthy, intoxicating itself with 
flamboyant material dreams. Its heroics are 
mercantile and the cloud-palaces which it builds 
have the vulgarity of a fashionable hotel. It 
seeks a city made with hands and heavily up- 
holstered. Its classic exponents were those leaden 
vulgarians, the later Roman Emperors, of the 
worst of whom Renan wrote : " He resembled 
what a modern tradesman of the middie class 
would be, whose good sense was perverted by 
reading modern poets, and who deemed it neces- 
sary to make his conduct resemble that of Hans 
of Iceland or the Burgraves." Grandeur has 
always vulgarity in its fibre, vulgarity and mad- 
ness. -^ 
The German fanaticism is compounded of 
commercial vainglory, and a rhetorical persuasion 
-n'' . ^^ teutonic race are God's chosen people. 
1 his kind of belief is beyond the reach of argument. 
But what in the Hebrews was a sombre and 
magnificent confidence, becomes in this modern 
German imitation something very like smugness. 
There has always been a tendency towards" such 
racial arrogance m the German mind. It has 
TZ^ V^"" ''''^^' Nietzsche's doctrines, Nvhich 
do not exalt any race stock, least of all the (iennaii 
t descends rather from the classic days of their 
literature- from Hegel, for example, who coi ' 
templatmg the ^stately process of' tiie Absolut. 
Ge m- ,n"'h ;'^' ""'f ^^^^^^^ up to date in the . 
quartei^ in the stupid nsolence of Genaan 
i8 
