They must therefore find a reason in philosophy and in the facts of history for their national programme.

Those who found these reasons and logically set them forth were hailed as the great philosophers and educators of Germany.

The logic was simple.

It was that all history and all progress had been made by war; that peace-loving races decayed, and finally perished, and their places were rightfully taken by the younger, braver, sturdier, and hardier fighting races.
"Let your superiority be an acceptance of hardship." "Die at the right time." "Be hard." "What is happiness?
The feeling that power increases, that resistance is being overcome." Nietzsche thus talked the principles of this philosophy; a something entirely apart from the principles of the Christian religion, but an absolutely philosophical, modern paganism; a worship of power, the assertions of one's individual and national self--"The Will to Power." Treitschke taught it to the youth of Germany as applied to war,--not the necessity for defense but the justice and the righteousness of aggressive warfare.

The Emperor and his court hailed these teachings with great acclaim.