Feb. 8.
Looking as we do at the recent Zeppelin raids in England from distance of half a world, other thoughts than those of mere material damage, or even loss of life, crowd in with question, answer, hint, and surmise, all having the why and wherefore of the phenomenon es their goal, and all seeking an explanation of 80 extraordinary a lapse from virtue onthe part of a people once amongst the most progressive of mankind. Economic suggestion points to the unquestioned advantage arising in war from the destruction of an enemy's material wealth: military maxims deal with the desirability of blowing up munitions and men, but as neither of these can show any success worth the mention, we are driven to seek for other causes. Two at once suggest themselves a desire to maintain an appearance of the aggressive, and an unquestioned wish to indulge that consuming hate which has eaten into the very soul of the German nation. Both are psychologic in their origin. To the real aggressive in war there pertains variety of advantages, but Germany's real aggressive is a thing of the past, and spectacular Zep-behn movements only serve to advertise the fact. They do, however, serve to ''feed fat that ancient grudge" which is now widely indulged. Not even the Imperial Chancellor would claim for them, as for the crime of the invasion of Belgium, that they are born of necessity. There can be no necessity for "hacking one's way through" the mangled -limbs of British mothers ~and British babes, nor can there be any adequate explanation other than that provided by the perverted psychology of a misled people.
Psychology has been defined as the ''positive science of behaviour."' A writer of much insight says, ina volume published in 1911, and therefore free from all taint of the present war.
"Just as the individual who is at the mercy of reactions never profite by his own experience, but, as it were, is born again a fool with each new infatuation that masters him, yo it is with a mob that runs after every new fashion of thought. Every fresh theory for them cancels all old once. When Nietazche is the fashionable prophet, he sweeps away the Commandments, the Gospels, and Kant. It la as if no one lid ever lowrned anything about life before him. His philosophy is welcomed for the mare pleasure of the shock which it gives; and when that shock has spent itself the philosophy will be dropped, as monkey drops one nut to clutch another." For the moment, as we have shown before, German action is instinct with the iconoclastic spirit of Nietszche. The Golden Rule is twaddle in its eyes. Pity it scorns, Compassion it laughs at. Cruelty, "frightfulness,"" destruction, and massacre, it upholds as instruments in the attainment of its Will to Power. The modern Attila has all the weapons of the ancient Hun, and many others infinitely more deadly. And he wields them all with an abandon, a delight, and a vigour which proves to demonstration the atavistic nature of the philosophy now over-mastering all governing circles under his sway. The worst of these reactions in morals, in ideas, and in art, author just quoted, waste the experience of ages.'* Could the results we now contemplate be more correctly or tersely characterized. The full-formed intention to indulge this "'waste'' runs through page after page of the German war-book. Sops to Cerberus are thrown here and there, only to be snatched away immediately so that the dogs
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.