But the well-meaning pacifists of all shades and degrees, from the wordy interpreters of Prussian philosophies in high places down to the credulous man in the street, who pinned his faith to the business instincts of our German customers, clung tenaciously to their comfortable faith. At last, five months ago, I uttered a further warning: Among the new or newly intensified currents of political life now traversing the Continents of Europe, none can be compared in its cultural and political bearings and influence with the rivalry between the Slav and Teutonic races. This is no mere dispute about territorial expansion, political designs, or commercial advantages. It is a ruthless struggle for mastery in all domains of national and international existence, which, so far as one can now see, may at most be retarded by diplomatic goodwill on both sides, but can hardly be settled with finality by any treaty or convention. For here we are dealing with an instinctive, semi-conscious movement which obeys natural laws, and not with a deliberate self-determining agency which may be modified by argument or swayed by persuasion.[13] In that same article I gave Germany’s plea for a preventive war, which I felt was then in the air. And I quoted the pregnant remark of my German colleague of the _Berliner Tageblatt_, who deliberately wrote: “It cannot be gainsaid that the growth of Russia is in itself a peril.” This chosen people, these apostles of culture and humanity, could not brook the natural growth of a gifted neighbour. Russia must be exterminated that Germany might thrive.