This may seem strange, but the process after all is quite simple, and to
study it in the case of Germany may throw helpful light on our own
affairs. However the blame may be apportioned between the Junker and
commercial classes, it is clear that, fired by the Bismarckian
programme, and greatly overstretching it, they played into each other's
hands. The former relied for the financing of its schemes on the support
of the commercials. The latter saw in the militarists a power which
might increase Germany's trade-supremacy. Vanity and greed are met
together, patriotism and profits have kissed each other. A Navy League
and an Army League and an Air League arose. Professors and teachers were
subsidized in the universities; the children were taught Pan-Germanism
in the schools; a new map of Europe was put before them. An enormous
literature grew up on the lines of Treitschke, Houston Chamberlain, and
Bernhardi, with novels and romances to illustrate side-issues, and the
Press playing martial music. The students and intellectuals began to be
infected; the small traders and shopkeepers were moved; and the
war-fever gradually spread through the nation. As to the artisans, they
may, as I have said, have largely belonged to the Socialist party--with
its poll of four million votes in the last election--and in the words of
Herr Haase in the Reichstag just before the war, they may have wished to
hold themselves apart from "this cursed Imperialist policy"; but when
the war actually arrived, and the fever, and the threat of Russia, and
the fury of conscription, they perforce had to give way and join in. How
on earth could they do otherwise? And the peasants--even if they escaped
the fever--could not escape the compulsion of authority nor the old
blind tradition of obedience. They do not know, even to-day, why they
are fighting; and they hardly know whom they are fighting, but in their
ancient resignation they accept the inevitable and shout "Deutschland
über Alles" with the rest. And so a whole nation is swept off its feet
by a small section of it, and the insolence of a class becomes, as in