It is true that men have in the past generally regarded the glory and the power of their particular group as an end which has the right to command their absolute devotion, and have believed that to suffer death in such a cause is the highest conceivable self-realisation. This does indeed represent a much higher ethical plane than that on which a man fights only for his own hand or the tiny circle of his blood kindred. But the fact that this loyalty to his group has had the power to evoke the highest possible sacrifice, does not prove that the glory and the power of the group provides a full and valid end for him as a man. In his character as German or Englishman, it may appear to provide him with an end to which he may properly submit himself without reserve; but it is questionable whether he can do so without some sacrifice of his possibilities and obligations as a man. The propaganda of Germanism produced very efficient and docile Germans; but the records of the war leave us little room to doubt that the process has had a mischievous effect upon their manhood. From the standpoint of an expanding society polity, education should produce individuals who are human before they are national. There is no system of national education which achieves this result; but the ultimate logic of the prevailing educational tradition as we see it in the German conduct of the war should provoke serious misgivings and minister to a change of heart in those persons who direct the policies of public education. (_c_) It is worth observing in this connection that even in Germany the Germanic propaganda had to trick itself out in a pseudo-universal jargon. It had to say large-sounding things about a _Kultur-mission_ to the world in order to validate itself in the eyes of the German people. The claim implied in the _Kultur-mission_ as it was commonly expounded is so preposterous as to be self-refuting to a normal mind; but this systematic diffusion of the idea proves that man has reached a point where the power and wealth of a particular group is no longer able by itself to evoke an effectual response in the individuals who compose the group. The fact is that civilised mankind is slowly learning to think in universal terms. Its social grasp is already faintly embracing the whole world.