A little yet an all-commanding star,
The morning star that heralds forth the day.
A Swiss View of Germany
By Maurice Millioud
M. Maurice Millioud, an eminent member of the Faculty of the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, has written an article of marked breadth and penetration in which he presents a quite novel view of the forces which, in combination, have brought Germany to its actual position. These forces are political, social, and economic; beneath and through them works the subtle impulsion of a national conception of right and might which the author sums up as the "ideology of caste." Want of space forbids the publication of the entire article. We give its most significant parts with such summary of those portions which it was necessary to omit as, we trust, will enable our readers to follow the general argument.
Humanitarians the most deeply buried in dreams yield with stupefaction to the evidence of fact. European war was possible, since here it is, and even a world war, for all continents are represented in the mêlée. Millions of men on the one side or the other are ranged along battle fronts of from 500 to 1,000 kilometers. We are witnessing a displacement of human masses to which there is nothing comparable except the formidable convulsions of geologic ages.
The world then was in formation. Will a new Europe, a new society, a new humanity, take form from the prodigious shock by which our imagination is confounded?
We can at least seek to understand what we cannot hinder.