conjuror in ideas. "Nothing in my hands—nothing up my sleeves." The great trick is to extract from any given idea its precise contrary—war from the Sermon on the Mount, or, like Professor Ostwald, the military dictatorship of the Kaiser from the dream of an intellectual internationalism. For such conjurors these things are but child's-play.
Let us expose them, by examining the words of this Dr. Ostwald, who has appeared during the last few months as the Baptist of the Gospel of the spiked helmet.
Here is the Idol to begin with—Kultur (made in Germany), with a capital K "rectiligne et de quatre pointes, comme un cheval de frise," as Miguel de Unamuno wrote to me. All around are little gods, the children of its loins: Kulturstaat, Kulturbund, Kulturimperium.…
"I am now" (it is the voice of Ostwald[1]) "going to explain to you the great secret of Germany. We, or rather the Germanic race, have discovered the factor of Organisation. Other peoples still live under the régime of individualism while we are under that of Organisation. The stage of Organisation is a more advanced stage of civilisation."
- ↑ In a declaration to the editor of the Swedish paper Dagen.
