Germany is in the position of the daughter who had acted on that teaching, and has become the horror of the neighborhood. She is in danger of being dispossessed as a public nuisance. Also an aggregation of individuals making one assertion do not necessarily have an effect in proportion to their numbers. Do you remember what I wrote you about white and black magicians, that two who worked together for good had the power of four, and that two who worked _together_ for evil had only the power of one and a half? Now what is Germany working for in this combined effort? Solely for _herself_--exactly like the black magician. So deep has the German conceit sunk into the German soul, that they really believe that in occupying and enslaving other countries they would be doing them a favor. No, I am not exaggerating. I have heard Germans make that humorless statement. Lunatic asylums are full of men who assert that they are kings, and an occasional inmate declares himself the King of kings. These patients are even more fully convinced than are the Germans, who assert their kingship. If assertion alone can transcend fact, these men are kings. Are they? To themselves they are, and the Germans are just as surely “over all” as are the straw-crowned kings in the asylums. It is useless to argue with a king in a straw crown. He has an irresistible argument--his crown. Can you not see it? If you do not salute, he turns his back and walks away. But even a king in a lunatic asylum may be cured and restored to a sane equality with his peers. That is what I hope for Germany. That is what the Masters hope--for Germany stands high in the record-book of the Masters. A king in a straw crown has not lost his soul through his false assertion of kingship. He is an immortal son of God. His spirit is as genuine as yours or mine. His error is only temporary, and is generally caused by brooding too long over imagined wrongs and slights. Not unlike Germany. When this idea of superiority began to fester in the minds of that noble people, they were not a great nation. They felt their wrongs and the slights put upon them. The only escape for their wounded egoism was into the world of the mind, where assertion has free play. They turned their backs and plaited their straw crowns. They were kings, and anyone who did not see it was unworthy of the honor of their friendship. Then, their madness having taken a violent form, came the great doctor, War, and confined them in a relatively narrow space; but the small people they knocked down in their first attack of violence still lie prostrate from the blow. The heirs of these kings will have to pay damages. The law of nations is even more just than the laws of men.