In addition to this powerful factor there existed another set of factors which worked with wonderful effectiveness toward the same end--the crippling of independent and practical political thinking. This was the conception of the state held by the ruling-classes of Germany and their manner of imposing this conception upon the people. It may briefly be put thus: the people existed for the sake of the state, not the state for the sake of the people. The state was the central and great idea; whatever weakened its authority or power was of evil. It could grant free play to individualism only in those things that could not affect the state directly, such as music and the fine arts, and to abstract philosophy and literature--particularly the drama--as long as they avoided dangerous political topics. Its keynote was authority and the subjection of the individual to the welfare of the state. The tendency of this system to make for efficiency so far as the actual brute power of a state is concerned cannot be denied in the light of the events of the World War. We have seen how in America itself, the stronghold of political and religious liberty, individualism was sternly repressed and even slight offenses against the authority of the state were punished by prison sentences of a barbarous severity unknown in any civilized country of Europe. We have seen the churches, reinterpreting the principles of the New Testament, and the schools, rewriting history to supposed good ends, both enlisted in this repression of individualism for the sake of increasing the efficiency of the state at a time when the highest efficiency was required. But the distinction between such conditions here and the pre-war conditions in Germany is that they obtained, although in milder form, in Germany in peace times as well. And the Anglo-Saxon conception of the state is as of a thing existing for the sake of the people and with no possible interests that cannot be served by the democratic and individualistic development of its people. Between this conception and the conception held by Germany's rulers there is a wide and irreconcilable difference. Apart, however, from any consideration of the merits of the German system, it must be admitted that the world has never seen another such intelligent application of principles of statecraft to the end sought to be attained. That the system eventually collapsed was not due to its internal faults, but to abnormal and unforeseeable events. The extent of its collapse, however, was directly due to the structure of the system itself.