The arrangement of my little jewel-heap was more difficult, if less laborious, than the ingathering. Many of my extracts, perhaps most, might with equal appropriateness have been ranged under any one of three or four rubrics. Thus my classification is at best rough and, to some extent, arbitrary. There is, however, a certain reason in the sequence of headings. The first section, "Deutschland ueber Alles," represents the "badge of all the tribe"--the characteristic which lies at the root of the whole mischief--Germany's colossal self-glorification, self-adoration. If there is anything like it in history, it is unknown to me. Other nations may have been as vain, but, not having the printing-press so readily at command, they gave their vanity less exuberant expression. Besides, they may have had a sense of humour. The manifestations of this foible (if a thing of such tragic consequences can be called by such a name) fall under certain sub-headings. It was clear, for instance, that the vauntings of German Kultur must have a compartment to themselves--likewise the assertions of a special relation to God, the claims to the status of a Chosen People, and the comparisons, direct and indirect, between Germany and Christ. Having established, by means of a cloud of witnesses, the ruling passion of the national mind, I present in the following section proofs of the "Ambitions" in which this megalomania finds its natural utterance. In the sections, "War-Worship," "Ruthlessness" and "Machiavelism," are grouped evidences of the methods of force and fraud by which it was hoped that these ambitions were to be realized. Then, in a final section, I have assembled evidences of the inevitable corollary to morbid self-adoration--the boundless and almost equally unprecedented contempt and loathing for all adversaries, but especially for England. The great majority of my quotations are taken direct from the original sources, the references being exactly given. I was scrupulous on this point, not only that the reader might be able to test the accuracy and fairness[7] of my work, but because I hoped that some one, some day, might be moved to republish the anthology in the original German. One cannot but think that, when the war-frenzy is over, a brief retrospect of its extravagances may be salutary for the German spirit. In a certain number of cases, however, I have not been able to give exact references, because the originals have not been accessible to me. This applies to my selections from three previous volumes of selections: Nippold's "Der Deutsche Chauvinismus," Andler's "Collection de documents sur le Pangermanisme," and Bang's "Hurrah and Halleluiah." Andler's excellent and scholarly method has, however, enabled me to "place" quotations from his collection to within a page or two. Thus, if some very Pan-German utterance does not occur on the precise page I have indicated, it will certainly be found on the preceding or on the following page.