Events have shown how little even Treitschke realized the strength of the Prussian State and the fanaticism of German nationalism. We know how little his dread of the black International of Catholicism and the red International of Socialism has been justified by the servile attitude of all the Opposition parties, and how, when the crisis came, both Catholics and Socialists proved as Prussian as the Junkers of Pomerania. XIV.—THE HERESY OF IMPERIALISM. If it be true that the citizen can only realize himself through the national State, if the whole course of human history is essentially a conflict of national States, and if the rich variety of civilization is made up of the rivalry of those national States, it logically follows that the expansion of any national State into a world empire must necessarily be baneful. The State must, no doubt, expand, but there is a limit to that expansion. The State must not incorporate any alien races which it cannot assimilate. When the State is unable to absorb heterogeneous elements and grows into a world empire, it becomes a danger both to itself and to humanity. Civilization has been threatened in the past by such monstrous conglomerates of heterogeneous nations. It has been threatened by the Spanish tyranny of Charles V. and the French tyranny of Louis XIV. and Napoleon. It is still threatened to-day by a similar danger. Two national States, Great Britain and Russia, have again grown into world empires. If their ambitions were to succeed, if the greater part of the civilized world were to become either Anglo-Saxon or Russian, there would be an end to the diversity and the liberty of modern civilization. Only the good sword of Prussia and Germany can save humanity from that Anglo-Saxon and Slav peril. XV.—THE DOGMA OF THE “WILL TO POWER.” But the fact that there is danger in the unlimited expansion of the national State ought not to prevent us from recognizing that irresistible tendency to expansion. The “will to power” is the essence of the State. “The State is power” (_Der Staat ist Macht_) must ever be the first axiom of political science. Muddled political thinkers, who confuse the spiritual with the temporal activities of man, may hold that the end of the State is social justice, or the diffusion of light, or the propagation of religion, or the advancement of humanity. But the cause of justice, the spread of education, will best be furthered if the State is strong. Only the strong can be just, partial, and enlightened. The sole criterion of political values is strength. It is the supreme merit of Machiavelli that he has been the first to emphasize this cardinal truth. The mortal sin of a State is to be weak. Only the strong man, only a Bismarck, a Richelieu, a Cavour, is a true statesman.