Many of these German views of the war imply a principle that runs through many fields of German thought--that values are something to be determined objectively. It is a scientific principle. Its conclusions rest upon proof, rather than upon subjective principles of valuation. There is another argument which is in part based upon an interpretation of scientific principles, but is in part also a fatalistic doctrine--confidence in the issues of battle as a means of testing the right and the validity of culture. The right will prevail, on this theory, because the right is the stronger or because in some sense strength _is_ the right, and because the method of selection of the best by struggle is a basic principle, and may be applied to everything that is living or is a product of life. If the German interpretation of the German cause has been dominated by an ideal of objective proof, we hear on the other side much about subjective rights and subjective evaluations--the right, for example, of every people to determine its own life, to have its own culture, to decide upon its own nationality. The Allies have believed that they were fighting to establish this principle throughout the world, and that this principle is diametrically opposed to the German principle. The thought of centralization, of a hierarchy of nations and the like, is wholly foreign to this democratic principle. Bergson (17) finds in the idea of industry the cause of the war and the principle of opposition in it. The Allies, he says, have been fighting against materialism with the forces of the spirit. Germany's forces are material. A mechanism is fighting against a self-renewing spirit. The ideal of force is met by the force of the ideal. Boutroux (13) says that France, in the war, has had before her eyes the idea of humanity; France was fighting for the recognition of the rights of personality--rights of each nation to its own existence. France is a champion of freedom; she wants all the legitimate aspirations of peoples to be realized. Germanism, with its ideal of force, is contrasted with the ideal of Greek and Christian culture and philosophy. A cult of justice and modesty is contrasted with the cult of power; in the former, sentiment and feeling have a place as criteria of values; in the latter the appeal is to science and to reason.