himself a Superman is likely to end in a madhouse or on the gallows: the nation, despotic king, or hierarchy, which substitutes its own selfish interests for humanity, shuts itself out from humanity, becomes inhuman, revives and worships standards of the Beast, and heads straight for perdition.

CHAPTER XIV

DESPOTISM OR DEMOCRACY?

Those arguments that are made, that the inferior race are to be treated with as much allowance as they are capable of enjoying; that as much is to be done for them as their condition will allow, what are these arguments? They are the arguments that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world.... All the arguments in favor of kingcraft were of this class; they always bestrode the necks of the people - not that they wanted to do it, but because the people were better off for being ridden. . . . Turn it whatever way you will, whether it come from the mouth of a king, an excuse for enslaving the people of his country, or from the mouth of men of one race as a reason for enslaving the men of another race, - it is all the same old serpent.

...

LINCOLN, Reply to Douglas, Chicago, July 10, 1858.

ON July 3, 1866, when Prussia, by de

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feating Austria at Sadowa, became preponderant in Germany, the Champion of European Despotism in an irrepressible conflict with Democracy was designated. Had Prussia been beaten there, she might never have dominated Germany, especially if Bis

marck had carried out his resolve to blow his brains out in case of defeat. The triumph of Prussia then and her overwhelming victory in 1870 made her the citadel of European Despotism. Her talent for organization, the feudal instinct innate in the Germans, the Hohenzollern ambition, the tenacity of the upper classes, the bureaucracy, and the genius of Bismarck, all worked together to perfect a despotic machine fitted not only to repel the invasion of Democracy but to conquer it.

Less than half a century ago Bismarck predicted that constitutional government would soon cease to exist in Europe. By a noteworthy coincidence Moltke said that the Germans would have to be ready for fifty years to defend Alsace and Lorraine — a hint that he had created an excuse for perpetuating Militarism in the German Empire. Bismarck so disliked having a republic for a neighbor that he even considered intriguing with the French Imperialists to restore Napoleon III to the throne; but as time went on he

thought that the lack of centralization in a republic and the inability to act quickly and unitedly more than counterbalanced the possible harm that might come from the sight of a republic on the German frontier. Sure of his competence to bleed France white whenever he chose, he took malign pleasure in the blunders of the French Republic, holding them up as proofs of the inferiority of the republican form of government. Before 1870 free institutions were the ideal of many middle-class Germans, and of some aristocrats; but after 1870 the ideal of Freedom slowly faded away, and the fact of Despotism, thinly disguised at first, took its place. The German incapacity for self-government, openly proclaimed by their leaders, from Bismarck to Bernhardi, was shown by the readiness with which they allowed themselves to be paternalized.

The only element which did not willingly take its place in the autocratic system was the Socialist. Bismarck persecuted the Socialists,

and yet they multiplied. The Kaiser declared that to him "the word Social Democrat is synonymous with enemy of Empire and Fatherland," and he handled them roughly; but still they grew. Nevertheless, they have had as yet no influence in checking Militarism or in spreading popular liberty, and they were as chaff before a hurricane when the Kaiser proclaimed his Atrocious War. Prussianized Germany stood unshaken as the champion of Despotism. Nothing could be more natural than that Austria-Hungary should have clung to her as a vassal to his suzerain; because the Austrian dynasty was as insatiate as the Prussian for autocratic rule, but had grown too senile to exercise it successfully. So, too, the Turkish Sultan recognized in the German Emperor a bird of kindred feather whose golden perch he gladly shared. Nor is it insignificant that William II has exerted an influence on the Holy See surpassing that of any other Protestant monarch: for the Roman Papacy, like the Holy Roman Empire,