observations may be hazarded.
First, the ultimate destiny of Germany cannot be regarded as very much in doubt. If we are content to look beyond this war, however it may issue, and take in a longer stretch of time, we can say with quite a reasonable degree of assurance that Germanic power, of the type we know and fear to-day, is impermanent. Germany has left the path of natural evolution, or rather, perhaps, has never found it. Unless, therefore, her civilization undergoes a radical change, and comes to be founded on a different series of instinctive impulses, it will disappear from the earth. All the advantages she has derived from conscious direction and organization will not avail to change her fate, because conscious direction is potent only when it works hand in hand with Nature, and its first task—which the directors of Germany have neglected—is to find out the path which man must follow.
Secondly, a word may be ventured about the war in so far as the consideration of Germany alone can guide us. As I have