The doctrine that Might is Right, though it is true, is an unprofitable doctrine, for it is true only in so broad and simple a sense that no one would dream of denying it.  If a single nation can conquer, depress, and destroy all the other nations of the earth and acquire for itself a sole dominion, there may be matter for question whether God approves that dominion; what is certain is that He permits it.  No earthly governor who is conscious of his power will waste time in listening to arguments concerning what his power ought to be.  His right to wield the sword can be challenged only by the sword.  An all-powerful governor who feared no assault would never trouble himself to assert that Might is Right.  He would smile and sit still.  The doctrine, when it is propounded by weak humanity, is never a statement of abstract truth; it is a declaration of intention, a threat, a boast, an advertisement.  It has no value except when there is some one to be frightened.  But it is a very dangerous doctrine when it becomes the creed of a stupid people, for it flatters their self-sufficiency, and distracts their attention from the difficult, subtle, frail, and wavering conditions of human power.  The tragic question for Germany to-day is what she can do, not whether it is right for her to do it.  The buffaloes, it must be allowed, had a perfect right to dominate the prairie of America, till the hunters came.  They moved in herds, they practised shock-tactics, they were violent, and very cunning.  There are but few of them now.  A nation of men who mistake violence for strength, and cunning for wisdom, may conceivably suffer the fate of the buffaloes and perish without knowing why.

To the English mind the German political doctrine is so incredibly stupid that for many long years, while men in high authority in the German Empire, ministers, generals, and professors, expounded that doctrine at great length and with perfect clearness, hardly any one could be found in England to take it seriously, or to regard it as anything but the vapourings of a crazy sect.  England knows better now; the scream of the guns has awakened her.  The German doctrine is to be put to the proof.  Who dares to say what the result will be?  To predict certain failure to the German arms is only a kind of boasting.  Yet there are guarded beliefs which a modest man is free to hold till they are seen to be groundless.  The Germans have taken Antwerp; they may possibly destroy the British fleet, overrun England and France, repel Russia, establish themselves as the dictators of Europe—­in short, fulfil their dreams.  What then?  At an immense cost of human suffering they will have achieved, as it seems to us, a colossal and agonizing failure.  Their engines of destruction will never serve them to create anything so fair as the civilization of France.  Their uneasy jealousy and self-assertion is a miserable substitute for the old laws of chivalry and regard for the weak, which they have renounced and forgotten.  The will and high permission of all-ruling Heaven may leave them at large for a time, to seek evil to others.  When they have finished with it, the world will have to be remade.