The Dominion. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 1918. GERMANY'S WAIL AGAINST FATE

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 37, 7 November 1918, Page 4

The Dominion. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 1918. GERMANY'S WAIL AGAINST FATE

Germany's hopes of world dominion have now been utterly and finally shattered, and tho alternativedownfall—stares her straight in the face. At more than one stage of the war viotory seemed almost within the enemy's grasp. At those terrible moments it looked as though sheer might would carry all before it. When the first great onslaught had brought the Kaiser's hosts almost to the gates of Paris, the Germans thought that they had won. But they were thrown back at tho Marne. Again they believed that the Allies were beaten when tho tremendous German offensivo during the early part of the present year seemed to , be sweeping all before it. But the rush was checked in the nick of time. Foch's mas-, terly counter-stroke turned the tide of war decisively in favour of the Allies. It has been a bitter and tantalising experience for the Germans'. De. Naumann talks as though some capricious and irrational fato had defrauded Germany of her just rights. In a recent speech in the Beichstag' ho said: "We wero entitled to hope for victory after our military successes. We hear to-day with bitterness that ; we have lost." Captain von Euhlwetter utters a similar cry against the obstinacy of the Allies in not knowing'-when they were beaten., "We'have," he writes, "been deceived respecting tho enemy's tenacity. We did not expect that Great Britain and her Allies would be so disinclined for peace after one and a half years' unrestricted submarine war."' And indeed, if brute force is the only thing that really counts in the world, the Germans have some justification for their complaint, that fate has not'played the game. When, the war started they were better prepared and better equipped for the conflict, than the Allies; their plans had bsen more carefully laid; their fighting machine was superior in numbers and in training. Everything was in readiness for striking a sudden and overwhelming blow. But the expected not happen. They gained many successes, but could not succeed; they won many victories, but victory always kept just beyond their reach. Ideas and theories which they had come to regard as axiomatic truths have been falsified by tho logic of events. This astounding experience has upset their mental balance. .Their state of . mind , is akin to that of an accountant who suddenly discovered that something had gone wrong with the multiplication table, or that of a mathematician who found parallel lines meeting each other, and two straight lines enclosing a space. Defeat has bewildered a nation w,hich has made itself believe that it must vanquish all enemies, "because the downfall of Germanism would mean the downfall of humanity."

Germany put her whole trust in power, force, efficiency—in material things. She made the irretrievable mistake of leaving the things of the spirit out of her calculations. Power was her god. Felix Dahn exults over the "joyous German right with the hammer to win land." "What does right matter to me?" says Stirner. "I have no need of it. . .'. I have the right to do what I have the power to do." This, of course, is stark materialism. The modern German philosophers, . poets, politicians did not have sufficient imagination to realise that there are people in the world who still recognise the authority of the moral law, and who will if necessary fight and die for a great and worthy ideal. The Germans now find to their ' dismay that, justice still counts for something. The war has shown them that nations which are fighting for a righteous cause have an invisible, but very potent weapon, which predatory peoples cannot command. Justice and freedom are inspiring battle cries. ShakesPEARt know more than the German devotees of the power god when he wrote; "Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just." In an illuminating address, delivered during the early part of the war, M. Henri Bergson, the distinguished French philosopher, pointed out that a long war would not suit Germany, "chiefly because her military power lacked that consciousness of a right superior to force by which she could sustain and recuperate her energies, Her moral force, being only the pride which comes from material force, would be exposed to the same vicissitudes ae this latter; in proportion as the one was being expended the other would be used up." This forecast has now been verified. Germany's military successes, as Dr. Nauhann sorrowfully admits, have proved'barren, and she now realises that she has lost. Spirit has triumphed over matter. description of the confounding of Germany by the moral forces which rose up against her ■ reads like a prophecy in the light of events which are now happening. Ho tells us how the moral forces suddenly revealed themselves as creators of material force; how tho heroic conception which a small people had formed.of its honour •enabled it to make head against a powerful empire; how at the cry of outraged justice a nation which till then had trusted in its fleet created a great army. "On the one side there was force spread out on- the surface; on the other there was force in tho depths. On the one side, mechanism, the manufactured article which cannot repair its own injuries; on the other life, tho power of creation, which makes and remakes itself at every instant." The machine used itself up. For a long time it resisted, then it bent, then it broke. "That tho powers of death might be matched against life in one supremo combat, destiny had gathered them all at a single point. And, behold how death was conquered; how humanity was saved by material suffering from tho moral downfall which would have been its end; while the peoples, joyful in their desolation, raised on high the song of deliverance from the depths of ruin and of grief!" Bergson stated in words well worth remembering at the present juncture that "Should the day como when Germany, conscious of her moral humiliation, shall say, to excuse herself, that sho had trusted herself too much to certain theories, that an error of judgment is not a crime,. it will bo necessary to remind her that her philosophy was simply a translation into intellectual terms of her brutality, her appetites and her vices." But perverse ambition when (Converted into a theory, feels more

at ease in working itself out to the end, and therefore a part of the responsibility must be thrown upon German logic. This war will not only bring about the downfall of Prussian militarism and tho Hohenzqllern dynasty; it will also utterly discredit tho German professors and their monstrous doctrines. The defeat and humiliation of Germany will make it clear to all men that the moral forces of the universe are strong enough to' crush rebellion against the moral order, and will always prevail in the long run.