[1] "We may declare that the problem of training in arms and turning to real account the energies of the nation was first undertaken in thorough earnestness by Germany. _We possess in our army a characteristic, necessary continuation of the school-system_. For many men there is no better means of training; for them drilling, compulsory cleanliness, and severe discipline are physically and morally indispensable in a time like ours, which unchains all spirits."--Treitschke, _Selections_, pp. 106-107. [2] Nietzsche is one of the rare exceptions. [3] Cf. Professor Kuno Meyer, _Times_, December 24, 1914, and March 8, 1915. {149} CHAPTER VI THE DEVIL'S ADVOCATE A German might fairly contend that British criticism of his moral ideas and political system is tainted throughout by ignorance and prejudice, and that all our talk of autocracy, bureaucracy, pedantocracy, military caste, and sham constitutionalism is merely an attempt to avoid the real issue by calling things, which we happen to dislike, by bad names. Political institutions, he might insist, must be judged by their fruits. If this test were applied, Germany in his opinion would have nothing to fear in any comparison. "We Germans," writes a correspondent, the Freiherr von Hexenküchen,[1] "are not inferior in intelligence or education to any other race. Had this been so, we could never have reached, in so short a period as four decades, the proud position which we now occupy in science, invention, manufacture, commerce, finance, and administration.[2] {150} Consequently, if we are well content to live under the institutions we possess, this cannot be put down either to our want of enterprise or to the dulness of our understandings. "Our people have already shown that they are willing to fight and die for these very institutions which you Englishmen affect to regard with so much contempt. Possibly your people are equally willing to fight and die for theirs. I do not deny this; but it is not yet proved; it remains to be proved. "I do not assert that your people are inferior to mine in their readiness to fight and die when they are actually faced with a great national danger. But I do claim that mine are superior to yours in the constancy of their devotion to duty. For a hundred years past--not only in periods of stress and danger, which stirred the national imagination, but equally in times of peace and prosperity, which always tend to encourage the growth of comfort and the love of ease--each succeeding generation has been found willing to train itself in the use of arms, so as to be prepared, if occasion should arise, to defend the Fatherland.