war only that England could contend with Germany on equal terms. Paradoxically again, it was war for which England was reluctant and Germany was eager.
War brought Germany into contact with the, to her, inexplicable ferocity of peoples of the socialized type under attack, and it was by this disappointment that the first blow to her morale was struck. The wastage of modern warfare must very soon have begun to impair the isolation and prestige of the officer class through increasingly free importation from without the pale. With this necessarily began to be sapped the absolute and rigid segregation on which leadership of the type we are considering so largely depends. At the same time, the general tendency of the increasing pressure of war is to wear down class segregation over the whole social field. This tendency which intensified {251} and invigorated the morale of her enemies would work steadily against the leadership morale of Germany. These factors must no doubt be added to the moral need for aggression, the exhaustion consequent upon forced offensives, and the specific intolerance of failure and retreat that combined to bring down the strongest example of the predaceous led society that history records.
S OME C HARACTERS OF A R ATIONAL S TATECRAFT.
If the foregoing discussion has been sound, we may attribute the impermanence of all civilizations of which we have knowledge to the failure of society to preserve with increasing magnitude of its communities a true homogeneity and a progressive integration of its elements. We have