During the civil war the South was possessed of a fixed idea: the same thing is true of Germany today. The South was committed to a position that the rest of the world had abandoned: Germany is committed to a type of bureaucratic government which is as much out of date in a modern world as slavery. No ordinary system of reasoning could show fair and honest Southern men in what respect they had the sentiment of civilization against them: the German is thoroughly convinced that he is fighting for the preservation of the most efficient type of government the world has seen. The South went to her defeat after a long and astonishingly effective resistance: Germany seems to be destined to a similarly long and steady process of reduction into complete prostration. The South was ruled by a small but able class of landed proprietors who refused to see the plain truth of the situation before them and prolonged the struggle until they were exhausted, although by making a favorable adjustment in accordance with the logic of the conditions before them they might have ended the war in 1864 and saved their people from the uttermost bitterness of defeat: the Germans, ruled by their Junkers, are equally deaf to argument, equally determined to die at their posts, and equally opposed to a compromise by which they will have to give up their antiquated “institution,” relinquish their special privileges, and make their country like the rest of the world. There are so many parallels between the two countries that we wonder if there will not also be a disposition of the victorious opposing allies to degrade Germany in her defeat. Probably her best adjusted punishment will be the reflection that her “peculiar institution” proved a failure in time of need. For a century she has been training an army, but it is not the army that has failed her. It has done all that could have been expected of it. Nor did the Southern army fail the South. It is not the sense of loyalty, nor the scientific efficiency, nor the unity of purpose within the empire, that have failed her. They are all splendid and have done what could be demanded of them. The thing that has failed is the peculiar way in which the German ruling classes have made use of these forces. They have used army, scientific efficiency, loyalty, and unity of purpose to promote the ends of an aggressive ruling class. Now the best treatment is to defeat them in the war and allow them plenty of time, with no unnecessary antagonisms, to learn that their system does not pay, and that any attempt to revive it in the future will be followed by another punishment as severe as that which this war brought. The support of a military caste and the training of all the men in a great army are heavy burdens on the economic life of the state. Will any nation continue to bear them if they come to nothing in the day of trial? Armies for defense do not demand the great expenditures that Germany has made in the last decades.