claim to be fighting against Germany; and Carlyle's endorsement of it at least creates the presumption that he would not sympathize with Germany, which today, greatly extended, is playing the part of the bullying nations he commended Frederick for thwarting. He seems, however, to advocate autocracy, and to deride democracy, and this would appear to put him in agreement with the kaiser and his professorial prompters. It is true that he did deride the notion that the decision of the majority is always right. He likewise insisted that all the constitutionality and legality conceivable will not ensure good government or justify incompetence or unrighteousness in power; and that, conversely, no formal or technical irregularity disqualifies a government which is beneficent and capable. He ridiculed the idea that political equality is synonymous with justice, but this does not mean that he believed in caste rule. His opposition to political equality was inspired by no respect for inherited authority or the sanctity of property, but was the result of a conviction that it is a crude and materialistic way of trying to solve an immensely complicated problem by a simple mechanical process. Not external equality, but _equity_, must be achieved to make government effective and successful, was his contention. Making men equal in political power, in his opinion, ensured that the government would be dominated by the ignorance and selfishness of the mass of men, rather than by the enlightenment and integrity of the relatively small portion of mankind whom nature fits for leadership by endowing them with superior moral and intellectual powers. He believed no man entitled to authority except on the basis of character and ability, and he was as bitterly opposed to the German scheme of class rule as he was to the quantitative methods of the radicals. It is entirely wrong to think that, because he denied that universal suffrage will guarantee justice and humanity, he endorsed injustice and oppression. He didn't care how a government was organized or what it claimed to do, but he only inquired what it had succeeded in doing, and by this he judged it. The results of the German policy have been disaster for the world as well as for Germany, and he would condemn the German government for this, without being at all concerned about its form. He attached no importance to a government's form; all he judged by was its spirit. He believed that a government is inevitably the expression of the intelligence and morality of the people it represents, and that any form is capable of proving either good or bad in operation. Germany may be an autocracy in form, but the German people almost unanimously endorsed the war and its enormities; so what we have is an exhibition of the fallibility of popular judgment more than a display of the evils of autocracy. On this point Carlyle's position is clear, while that of the critics who accuse him of having endorsed German practices,