This characterization of German life reveals something very much like a paradox in the principles of the war. We see a conflict in one direction between a certain mediaevalism in government and social forms and a more modern and progressive type; we see also a conflict of a modernism of an extreme form, represented by a scientific civilization, united with this mediaevalism, and in opposition to a conception of life which is in some respects more naive and more primitive. The explanation of this paradox is that Germany offers an illustration of a phenomenon of development that has been seen before in history, of an excess of development and specialization in a direction that appears to be off the main line of progress, or at least is an anachronism. Germany has shown us the effects of rationalism, some would say a morbid and hypertrophied reason. This rationalism is certainly in part a product of systematic education and propaganda, a conscious exploitation of science, and it is in part temperamental. Such a result is always possible in a small state with a highly centralized form of government. It is a notorious fact that Germany's type of civilization can be spread neither by persuasion nor by force. If we may apply a biological analogy we may say that German Kultur in its modern form cannot survive. That this German civilization has been felt by the world at large to be abnormal and of the nature of a monstrosity we can hardly doubt, and that therefore to some extent there has been a sense, on the part of the enemies of Germany, of fighting to root out a dangerous and rank growth. Germany, seeing in her own civilization only the appearance of modernism, has been inclined to regard all other civilizations as decadent.