The Duke of Alba took measures to protect the learned men in the towns of Holland, against which he was directing his army; in the eighteenth century, the small German States, allied with Frederick the Great against the French, adopted more freely than ever French ideas, French fashions, French literature; in the midst of the struggle with England, the Convention sent a deputation there to urge the English to adopt the French metric system. The notion that political warfare involves a war of cultures is entirely an invention of modern times, and confers upon them a conspicuous place in the moral history of humanity.
Benda is diplomatic with his criticism; the “conspicuous place in the moral history of humanity,” is, in fact, a moral failure of historical proportions.