than merely a political doctrine, but is also a creed. One might almost go further and say that it is a gospel, in the fullest sense of the word—a gospel of the super-man and the super-nation. The Pan-Germanists have gone to extraordinary and even lunatic lengths in order to show the superiority of the Germans and Germany over the rest of the. peoples and nations of the earth. One very prominent German, Friedrich Lange, invented and preached a " German religion," this religion being subsequently promulgated from numbers of pulpits throughout the land, the main tenet being that the " German people are the elect of God, and their enemies are the enemies of the Lord." In one work which not only treats itself quite seriously, but has so been treated by the German people, it is seriously suggested that Jesus Christ was a German; St. Paul too was a German, and so on from Michael Angelo, Raphael, Machiavelli (who might well have been), Rabelais, Pascal, and Descartes down even to Cecil Rhodes All this foolish idealism of the Germans has had its main source and inspiration in the writings and teachings of a whole host of German philosophers, professors, theologians, publicists, militarists and so forth, of whom the names of von Treitschke, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, and von Bernhardi are perhaps best known to the average Englishman. From the lowest centres of intellectual development, as for example the primary schools, right up through commercial and professional circles and the universities and governmental bureaus, to the highest places, wherein moved and had their being the Kaiser and his immediate circle, this philosophy or religion made its way, filling with its absurdities the soul of the whole people. Treitschke may be fairly summed up as the German amalgam of Macaulay and Carlyle. He was an historian, of Germany in particular, whose historical writings had, as their objective, the creation of a German national spirit. The essential difference between Treitschke and Carlyle is that the German historian laid less stress upon moral grandeur and greater stress, if possible, upon the glory of warlike achievement than did Carlyle, and in this is found all the difference that exists to-day between German and British national ideals. Treitschke was born at Dresden in 1834, of a family which was Czech in origin, and died when he reached the age of sixty-two years. His mother, however, was of pure German descent, and, though born in the Saxon capital, Treitschke became in ideals essentially German, or rather Prussian, as distinguished from Saxon. He commenced life, as a boy, with general Germanic aspirations and with a profound disgust for Saxony by reason of
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