[6] There is, indeed, another school which would like to shut off all
foreign countries by a tariff wall and make the British Empire mutually
self-supporting, on the economic basis adopted by those three old ladies
in decayed circumstances who subsisted by taking tea in one another's
houses.
[7] Even if partially successful, as has lately been pointed out, the
greater the financial depression of Germany the greater would be the
advantage to Russia of doing business with Germany.
[8] It may be proper to point out that I by no means wish to imply
that democracy is necessarily the ultimate and most desirable form of
political society, but merely that it is a necessary stage for those
peoples that have not yet reached it. Even Treitschke in his famous
_History_, while idealising the Prussian State, always assumes that
movement towards democracy is beneficial progress. For the larger
question of the comparative merits of the different forms of political
society, see an admirable little book by C. Delisle Burns, _Political
Ideals_ (1915). And see also the searching study, _Political Parties_
(English translation, 1915), by Robert Michels, who, while accepting
democracy as the highest political form, argues that practically it
always works out as oligarchy.
[9] Professor D.S. Jordan has quoted the letter of a German officer to
a friend in Roumania (published in the Bucharest _Adverul_, 21 Aug.,
1915): "How difficult it was to convince our Emperor that the moment had
arrived for letting loose the war, otherwise Pacifism, Internationalism,
Anti-Militarism, and so many other noxious weeds would have infected our
stupid people.
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