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for poverty? To even debate whether the war will end povertybecomes an exhibition of ugly pragmatism and the sign of an ignoblemind.Germany had her squadrons of poets and philosophers and professorsto perform this service. And they would not seem, if youwere to meet them, very different from the tribe anywhere else inthe world—scholarly, full of the milk of human kindness and reasonableness,love of order, and concern for the basic virtues of civilization.In England it could be such a soul as John Ruskin, endlesslyweeping over the sufferings of the poor while summoning the youngmen of Oxford to go forth and conquer all the lands they could laytheir hands on. Or it could be so great a lover of order as the LondonTimes which, before the last war, bemoaned the long peace. "Thisnation," it said, "is a good deal enervated by the long peace, by easyhabits of intercourse, by peace societies and false economies (on thearmy). It wants more romantic action to revive the knightly principle."In Italy the doctrine would find its evangelists among literarymen by the score, and these would include her two foremost scholarsand her foremost poet.There is another batch, not so numerous, but more dangerous -perhaps.They are the men who yearn for power. The opportunity forthem to attain power is not always present. And the conditionsfavorable to one man may not suit the peculiar talents of another.Always there are men of the Mussolini or Hitler stripe present in allsocieties. But they require the proper conditions for their emergence.It is entirely possible that neither Hitler nor Mussolini would havereached to more than local eminence, and then as public nuisances,had there been no World War I. The cultivation of this evil crop oflawless hunters after power has been ascribed in large measure to thespadework of men like Machiavelli, Nietzsche, and Spengler, especiallyMachiavelli, who is hailed as the founder of an ever-growingschool. But the importance of the Florentine philosopher—as well asthe German authors of Zarathustra and Decline of the West—is agood deal exaggerated. The power-hunters did not need Machiavellior Nietzsche to tell them there was a moral code for the herd andanother one for them. Corrupt leaders in New York, Chicago, KansasCity, or Philadelphia in our own day—and throughout history—123