Altogether we could not have a better guide to the study of the present international situation from the purely German point of view, nor could we find another book which gives us more undisguisedly the “mentality,” the prejudices and prejudgments and opinions of the ruling classes. And it is a characteristically German trait that no less than one-third of the work should be given to the philosophy and ethics of the subject. General von Bernhardi surveys the field from the vantage-ground of first principles, and his book is a convincing proof of a truth which we have expressed elsewhere that in Prussia war is not looked upon as an accident, but as a law of nature; and not only as a law of nature, but as the law of man, or if not as the law of man, certainly as the law of the “German superman.” It is not enough to say that war has been the national industry of Prussia. It forms an essential part of the philosophy of life, the _Weltanschauung_ of every patriotic Prussian. Bernhardi believes in the morality, one might almost say in the sanctity, of war. To him war is not a necessary evil, but, on the contrary, the source of every moral good. To him it is pacificism which is an immoral doctrine, because it is the doctrine of the materialist, who believes that enjoyment is the chief end of life. It is the militarist who is the true idealist because he assumes that humanity can only achieve its mission through struggle and strife, through sacrifice and heroism. It is true that Bernhardi ignores the greatest of Prussian philosophers, whose immortal plea in favour of perpetual peace is dismissed as the work of his dotage. But if he dismisses Kant, he adduces instead a formidable array of thinkers and poets in support of his militarist thesis; Schiller and Goethe, Hegel and Heraclitus, in turn are summoned as authorities. Even the Gospels are distorted to convey a militarist meaning, for the author quotes them to remind us that it is the warlike and not the meek that shall inherit the earth. But Bernhardi’s chief authorities are the historian of the super-race, the Anglophobe Treitschke, and the philosopher of the superman, Nietzsche. Nine out of ten quotations are taken from the political treatises of the famous Berlin professor, and the whole spirit of Bernhardi’s book is summed up in the motto borrowed from Zarathustra and inscribed on the front page of the volume: “War and courage have achieved more great things than the love of our neighbour. It is not your sympathy, but your bravery, which has hitherto saved the shipwrecked of existence. “‘What is good?’ you ask. To be brave is good.”[16] [16] Nietzsche’s “Thus Spake Zarathustra,” First Part, 10th Speech.