GERMAN PHILOSOPHY AND GERMAN WARFARE.
[To THE EDITOR Or THIN " SPECTATOR."] Sim,—Two thousand years ago Plato taught how a philosopher on the throne would rule his people for the benefit of all. In our own day a philosopher of quite different type has preached to appreciative Germans the principles by which an Overman or War Lord may justify his acts on a basis of non-moral ethics. It is perhaps going too far to say that the Kaiser is a conscious disciple of Nietzsche, but it is certain that the ideas of Nietzsche have permeated the minds of the rulers of Germany. The doctrine of the Overman is in the air. The Kaiser's proclamations reek of it. Nietzsche has but stated in terms of philosophy the practice advocated by von Bern. hardi and his school. A concise summary of this doctrine— Force the Remedy—may interest your readers. It is taken from The Philosophy of Nietzsche, by his admirer, Mr. Chatterton Hill (pp. 63, &c.) :- " Nietzsche tells us that the great man, the truly great man, is not he who is in sympathy with his fellows, but he who is capable of inflicting the cruellest suffering without heeding the cries of his victim. The greatness of a man is to be measured by his capacity for inflicting suffering. It is necessary to harden our- selves, to harden ourselves greatly. ... You say a good Genee sanctifies every war, but I say a good war sanctifies every cause. . . . The great man of the future, he who is alone worthy to be a master and ruler of men, must necessarily be a criminal, that is to say, a man who knows not good and bad because he is above them ; a man who is the scourge of humanity; who, in order to realize the expansion of his personality, needs humanity as a field for experiments, as a field in which he can sow suffering broadcast, for every great man is warlike and hard-hearted, and needs great hecatombs in order to attain his object."
It is in keeping with these doctrines that " Vae Victis " rings as hardly in the streets of Liege and above the ashes of Louvain as it once did under the shadow of the Capitol. What new Camillus will arise to requite the arrogant brutality of the Brennus of Berlin ?—I am, Sir, &o.,
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