[2] Rudolf Goldscheid, Deutschlands Grösste Gefahr, Institut Orell Füssli, Zürich, 1916.
[3] One may remark that up to the outbreak of war fifty per cent. of the import trade of Russia has been with Germany. To suppose that that immense volume of trade can suddenly be transferred after the war from a neighbouring country which has intelligently and systematically adapted itself to its requirements to a remote country which has never shown the slightest aptitude to meet those requirements argues a simplicity of mind which in itself may be charming, but when translated into practical affairs it is stupendous folly.
[4] Sir Valentine Chirol remarks of Bismarck, in an Oxford Pamphlet on "Germany and the Fear of Russia":—"Friendship with Russia was one of the cardinal principles of his foreign policy, and one thing he always relied upon to make Russia amenable to German influence was that she should never succeed in healing the Polish sore."
[5] In making these observations on the Russians and the Prussians, I do not, of course, overlook the fact that all nations, like individuals,
"Compound for sins they are inclined to
By damning those they have no mind to,"
and the English treatment of the conscientious objector in the Great War has been just as odious as Russian treatment of the Finns or Prussian treatment of war prisoners, and even more foolish, since it strikes at our own most cherished principles.
[6] There is, indeed, another school which would like to shut off all foreign countries by a tariff wall and make the British Empire mutually self-supporting, on the economic basis adopted by those three old ladies in decayed circumstances who subsisted by taking tea in one another's houses.
[7] Even if partially successful, as has lately been pointed out, the greater the financial depression of Germany the greater would be the advantage to Russia of doing business with Germany.
[8] It may be proper to point out that I by no means wish to imply that democracy is necessarily the ultimate and most desirable form of political society, but merely that it is a necessary stage for those peoples that have not yet reached it. Even Treitschke in his famous History, while idealising the Prussian State, always assumes that movement towards democracy is beneficial progress. For the larger question of the comparative merits of the different forms of political society, see an admirable little book by C. Delisle Burns, Political Ideals (1915). And see also the searching study, Political Parties (English translation, 1915), by Robert Michels, who, while accepting democracy as the highest political form, argues that practically it always works out as oligarchy.
[9] Professor D.S. Jordan has quoted the letter of a German officer to a friend in Roumania (published in the Bucharest Adverul, 21 Aug., 1915): "How difficult it was to convince our Emperor that the moment had arrived for letting loose the war, otherwise Pacifism, Internationalism, Anti-Militarism, and so many other noxious weeds would have infected our stupid people. That would have been the end of our dazzling nobility. We have everything to gain by the war, and all the chimeras and stupidities of democracy will be chased from the world for an infinite time."