During the intervening periods the chief duty of the state is to prepare for war, so that when it comes, victory, and with it benefits of the material, as well as of the spiritual sort, may be secured. No means which will help to secure victory are immoral, whether in the years preceding the outbreak of hostilities, or afterwards, when the war is in full course. If the state, aided by its men of science, could find any safe and secret means of sending a plague, as an advance guard, to ravage the enemy, where is the objection? The soul of a Prussian soldier might revolt against this form of warfare, but at what point would it conflict with the teachings of the priesthood? Nor can we imagine, were the thing possible, that the bureaucracy would allow itself to be hampered by any scruples. As to the declaration of war, let it be made when the state is in a strong position and its prey in a weak one. This is the all-important consideration. The actual pretext is only a secondary matter, though worthy of attention for the effect it may have on the action of neutrals. And as war is a game of chance, it is wise and right to 'correct fortune,' so far as this can be accomplished during years of peace and under the cloak of amity, by the aid of spies, secret agents, accomplices, traitors, rebels, and what not besides. The state which has evolved this system and laid {146} down these rules, without the least attempt at secrecy or concealment, is the most efficient machine of the fighting and administrative kind at present existing in the world--perhaps which has ever existed in the world. But as you increase the size, power, and complexity of a machine there are obvious dangers unless you can also increase the calibre of the men who have to drive and direct it. This is a much more difficult problem than the other; and there is no evidence to show that it has been solved in the case of Germany. The more powerful the machine, the greater is apt to be the disaster if it is mishandled. In history the blunders of bureaucracy are a by-word. They have been great and many, even when, as in Germany to-day, the bureaucracy is in the full vigour of its age, and in the first flower of uprightness; for a bureaucracy, in order to retain its efficiency, must remain incorruptible, and that is one of the hardest things to secure. As for the priesthoods, if they are to be of any use, their faith must burn brightly. And the faith of a priesthood is very apt to burn itself out--very apt also to set fire to other things during the process; even to the edifice of popular virtue and the imperial purple itself, which things--unlike the Phoenix, the Salamander, and the Saint--are none the better or stronger for being burned.