But the national genius, of which those splendid achievements are the fruits, has been yoked to the chariot of war in a cause which is dissolvent of culture, trust, humanity, and of all the foundations of organized society. That cause is the paramountcy of their race, the elevation of Teutonism to the height occupied among mortals by Nietzsche’s Over-man, whose will is the one reality, and whose necessities and desires are above all law. Around this root-idea a vast politico-racial system, partaking of the nature of a new religion, has been elaborately built up by the non-German Prussians, and accepted and assimilated by a docile people which was sadly deficient in the political sense. And it is for the purpose of forcing this poisonous creed and its corollaries upon Europe and the world that the most tremendous war of history is now being waged. This remarkable movement had long ago been studied and described by a few well-informed and courageous British observers, but the true issues have been for the first time revealed to the dullest apprehension by the historic episode of the scrap of paper. It is only fair to own that the Prussianized Germans have fallen from their high estate, and become what they are solely in consequence of the shifting of their faith from the spiritual to the political and military sphere. Imbued with the new spirit, which is impatient of truth when truth becomes an obstacle to success, as it is of law when law becomes a hindrance to national aims, they have parted company with morality to enlist in the service of a racial revival based on race hatred. Pan-Germanism is a quasi-religious cult, and its upholders are fanatics, persuaded of the righteousness of their cause, and resolved, irrespective of the cost, to help it to triumph.