solution, and that almost universally accepted by the bulk of the people, insists that the {195} “military domination of Prussia,” “German militarism,” or the “German military system” as it is variously phrased, must be wholly and finally destroyed. This doctrine has received many interpretations. In spite, however, of criticism by moderates on the one hand and by unpractically ferocious root-and-branch men on the other, it seems to remain—significantly enough—an expression of policy which the common man feels for the time to be adequate.
The most considerable criticism has come from the small class of accomplished and intellectual writers who from their pacifist and “international” tendencies have to some extent been accused, no doubt falsely, of being pro-German in the sense of anti-English. The complaint of this school against the official declaration of policy is, that it does not disclose a sufficiently definite object or the means by which this object is to be attained. We are told that as a nation we do not know what we are fighting for, and, what amounts to the same thing, that we cannot attain the object we profess to pursue by the exercise of military force however drastically it may be applied. We are warned that we should seek a “reasonable” peace and one which by its moderation would have an educative effect upon the German people, that to crush and especially in any way to dismember the German Empire would confirm its people in their belief that this war is a war of aggression by envious neighbours, and make revenge a national aspiration.
Such criticism has not always been very effectually answered, and the generally current feeling has proved disconcertingly inarticulate in the presence of its agile and well-equipped opponents. Indeed, upon the ordinary assumptions of political debate, it is doubtful whether any quite satisfactory answer {196} can be produced. It is just, however, these very assumptions which must be abandoned and replaced by more appropriate psychological principles when we are trying to obtain light upon the relations of two peoples of profoundly different social type and instinctive reaction. The common man seems to be dimly aware of