It were incredible that educated people who
have been brought up within earshot of Christian ethics and within sight
of gentle men and women should all be content with the religion-of-valor
plan. Accordingly, the finer German spirits have invented a supplement
to that Stone Age religion. They have set up for worship a mystical
conception of the State as a majestic and beneficent entity which
embraces all the noble activities of the nation and guides it to its
best achievements. To this ideal State every German owes duty,
obedience, and complete devotion. The trouble with this supplement to
the religion of valor is that it dwells too much on submission,
self-sacrifice, and discipline, and not enough on individual liberty and
self-control in liberty. Accordingly, when the valiant men got control
of the Government and carried the nation into a ferocious war, they
swept away with them all the devotees of this romantic and spiritual
State. The modern German is always a controlled, directed, and drilled
person, who aspires to control and discipline his inferiors; and in his
view pretty much all mankind are his inferiors.
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