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diff --git a/41272-0.txt b/41272-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2e6fa3a --- /dev/null +++ b/41272-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1391 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41272 *** + + Transcriber's Note: + + Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as + possible. + + "Reverend Herr Doktor Konsistorialat D. Vorwerk" has been changed to + "Reverend Herr Doktor Konsistorialrat D. Vorwerk" + + Italic text has been marked with _underscores_. + + + + +"Speaking of Prussians--" + + + + +BY IRVIN S. COBB + + +FICTION + + THOSE TIMES AND THESE + LOCAL COLOR + OLD JUDGE PRIEST + FIBBLE, D. D. + BACK HOME + THE ESCAPE OF MR. TRIMM + + +WIT AND HUMOR + + "SPEAKING OF OPERATIONS----" + EUROPE REVISED + ROUGHING IT DE LUXE + COBB'S BILL OF FARE + COBB'S ANATOMY + + +MISCELLANY + + "SPEAKING OF PRUSSIANS----" + PATHS OF GLORY + + + GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY + NEW YORK + +[Illustration: TURNING THE EAGLE LOOSE] + + + + + "_Speaking of Prussians----_" + + _By_ + + _Irvin S. Cobb_ + + _Author of + "Back Home," "Europe Revised," + "Speaking of Operations----", Etc._ + + [Illustration] + + _New York + George H. Doran Company_ + + + + + COPYRIGHT, 1917, + + BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY + + + COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY + + PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA + + + DEDICATED + BY PERMISSION + TO + WOODROW WILSON + PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES + + + + +"_Speaking of Prussians--_" + + + + +I + + +I believe it to be my patriotic duty as an American citizen to write +what I am writing, and after it is written to endeavour to give to it as +wide a circulation in the United States as it is possible to find. In +making this statement, though, I am not setting myself up as a teacher +or a preacher; neither am I going upon the assumption that, because I am +a fairly frequent contributor to American magazines, people will be the +readier or should be the readier to read what I have to say. + +Aside from a natural desire to do my own little bit, my chief reason is +this: Largely by chance and by accident, I happened to be one of four or +five American newspaper men who witnessed at first hand the German +invasion of Belgium and one of three who, a little later, witnessed +some of the results of the Germanic subjugation of the northern part of +France. I was inside Germany at the time the rush upon Paris was checked +and the retreat from the Marne took place, thereby having opportunity to +take cognisance of the feelings and sentiments and the impulses which +controlled the German populace in a period of victory and in a period of +reversals. + +I am in the advantageous position, therefore, of being able to recount +as an eyewitness--and, as I hope, an honest one--something of what war +means in its effects upon the civilian populace of a country caught +unawares and in a measure unprepared; and, more than that, what war +particularly and especially means when it is waged under the direction +of officers trained in the Prussian school. + +Having seen these things, I hate war with all my heart. I am sure that I +hate it with a hatred deeper than the hate of you, reader, who never saw +its actual workings and its garnered fruitage. For, you see, I saw the +physical side of it; and, having seen it, I want to tell you that I +have no words with which halfway adequately to describe it for you, so +that you may have in your mind the pictures I have in mine. It is the +most obscene, the most hideous, the most brutal, the most malignant--and +sometimes the most necessary--spectacle, I veritably believe, that ever +the eye of mortal man has rested on since the world began, and I do hate +it. + +But if war had to come--war for the preservation of our national honour +and our national integrity; war for the defence of our flag and our +people and our soil; war for the preservation of the principles of +representative government among the nations of the earth--I would rather +that it came now than that it came later. I have a child. I would rather +that child, in her maturity, might be assured of living in a peace +guaranteed by the sacrifices and the devotion of the men and women of +this generation, than that her father should live on in a precarious +peace, bought and paid for with cowardice and national dishonour. + + + + +II + + +A few days before war was declared, an antimilitarist mass meeting was +held in New York. It was variously addressed by a number of well-known +gentlemen regarding whose purity of motive there could be no question, +but regarding whose judgment a great majority of us have an opinion that +cannot be printed without the use of asterisks. And it was attended by a +very large representation of peace-loving citizens, including a numerous +contingent of those peculiar patriots who, for the past two years, have +been so very distressed if any suggestion of hostilities with the +Central Powers was offered, but so agreeably reconciled if a break with +the Allies, or any one of them, seemed a contingency. + +It may have been only a coincidence, but it struck some of us as a +significant fact that, from the time of the dismissal of Count Von +Bernstorff onward, the average pro-peace meeting was pretty sure to +resolve itself into something rather closely resembling a pro-German +demonstration before the evening was over. Persons who hissed the name +of our President behaved with respectful decorum when mention was made +of a certain Kaiser. + +However, I am not now concerned with these weird Americans, some of whom +part their Americanism in the middle with a hyphen. Some of them were in +jail before this little book was printed. I am thinking now of those +national advocates of the policy of the turned cheek; those professional +pacificists; those wavers of the olive branch--who addressed this +particular meeting and similar meetings that preceded it--little +brothers to the worm and the sheep and the guinea pig, all of them--who +preached not defence, but submission; not a firm stand, but a complete +surrender; not action, but words, words, words. + + + + +III + + +Every right-thinking man, I take it, believes in universal peace and +realises, too, that we shall have universal peace in that fair day when +three human attributes, now reasonably common among individuals and +among nations, have been eliminated out of this world, these three being +greed, jealousy and evil temper. Every sane American hopes for the time +of universal disarmament, and meantime indulges in one mental +reservation: He wants all the nations to put aside their arms; but he +hopes his own nation will be the last to put aside hers. But not every +American--thanks be to God!--has in these months and years of our +campaign for preparedness favoured leaving his country in a state where +she might be likened to a large, fat, rich, flabby oyster, without any +shell, in a sea full of potential or actual enemies, all clawed, all +toothed, all hungry. The oyster may be the more popular, but it is the +hard-shelled crab that makes the best life-insurance risk. + +And when I read the utterances of those conscientious gentlemen, who +could not be brought to bear the idea of going to war with any nation +for any reason, I wished with all my soul they might have stood with me +in Belgium on that August day, when I and the rest of the party to which +I belonged saw the German legions come pouring down, a cloud of smoke by +day and a pillar of fire by night, with terror riding before them as +their herald, and death and destruction and devastation in the tracks +their war-shod feet left upon a smiling and a fecund little land. +Because I am firmly of the opinion that their sentiments would then have +undergone the same instantaneous transformation which the feelings of +each member of my group underwent. + +Speaking for myself, I confess that, until that summer day of the year +1914, I had thought--such infrequent times as I gave the subject any +thought at all--that for us to spend our money on heavy guns and an +augmented navy, for us to dream of compulsory military training and a +larger standing army, would be the concentrated essence of economic and +national folly. + +I remember when Colonel Roosevelt--then, I believe, President +Roosevelt--delivered himself of the doctrine of the Big Stick, I, being +a good Democrat, regarded him as an incendiary who would provoke the +ill will of great Powers, which had for us only kindly feeling, by the +shaking in their faces of an armed fist. I remember I had said to +myself, as, no doubt, most Americans had said to themselves: + +"We are a peaceful nation; not concerned with dreams of conquest. We +have the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans for our protection. We are not +going to make war on anybody else. Nobody else is going to make war on +us. War is going out of fashion all over the planet. A passion for peace +is coming to be the fashion of the world. The lion and the lamb lie down +together." + +Well, the lion and the lamb did lie down together--over there in Europe; +and when the lion rose, a raging lion, he had the mangled carcass of the +lamb beneath his bloodied paws. And it was on the day when I first saw +the lion, with his jaws adrip, coming down the highroads, typified in +half a million fighting men--men whose sole business in life was to +fight, and who knew their business as no other people ever have known +it--that in one flash of time I decided I wanted my country to quit +being lamb-like, not because the lion was a pleasing figure before mine +eyes, but because for the first time I realised that, so long as there +are lions, sooner or later must come oppression and annihilation for the +nation which persists in being one of the lambs. + +As though it happened yesterday, instead of thirty months ago, I can +recreate in my mind the physical and the mental stage settings of that +moment. I can shut my eyes and see the German firing squad shooting two +Belgian civilians against a brick wall. I can smell the odours of the +burning houses. Yes, and the smell of the burning flesh of the dead men +who were in those houses. I can hear the sound of the footsteps of the +fleeing villagers and the rumble of the tread of the invaders going by +so countlessly, so confidently, so triumphantly, so magnificently +disciplined and so faultlessly equipped. + +Most of all, I can see the eyes and the faces of sundry German officers +with whom I spoke. And when I do this I see their eyes shining with joy +and their faces transfigured as though by a splendid vision; and I can +hear them--not proclaiming the justice of their cause; not seeking +excuse for the reprisals they had ordered; not, save for a few +exceptions among them, deploring the unutterable misery and suffering +their invasion of Belgium had wrought; not concerned with the ethical +rights of helpless and innocent noncombatants--but proud and swollen +with the thought that, at every onward step, ruthlessness and +determination and being ready had brought to them victory, conquest, +spoils of war. Why, these men were like beings from another world--a +world of whose existence we, on this side of the water, had never +dreamed. + +And it was then I promised myself, if I had the luck to get back home +again with a whole skin and a tongue in my head and a pen in my hand, I +would in my humble way preach preparedness for America; not preparedness +with a view necessarily of making war upon any one else, but +preparedness with a view essentially of keeping any one else from making +war upon us without counting the risks beforehand. + +In my own humble and personal way I have been preaching it. In my own +humble and personal way I am preaching it right this minute. And if my +present narrative is so very personal it is because I know that the +personal illustration is the best possible illustration, and that one +may drive home his point by telling the things he himself has seen and +felt better than by dealing with the impressions and the facts which +have come to him at secondhand. + +Also, it seems to me, since the break came, that now I am free to use +weapons which I did not feel I had the right to use before that break +did come. Before, I was a newspaper reporter, engaged in describing what +I saw and what I heard--not what I suspected and what I feared. Before, +I was a neutral citizen of a neutral country. + +I am not a neutral any more. I am an American! My country has clashed +with a foreign Power, and the enemy of my country is my enemy and +deserving of no more consideration at my hands than he deserves at the +hands of my country. Moreover, I aim to try to show, as we go along, +that any consideration of mercy or charity or magnanimity which we might +show him would be misinterpreted. Being what he is he would not +understand it. He would consider it as an evidence of weakness upon our +part. It is what he would not show us, and if opportunity comes will not +show us, any more than he showed it to Belgium or to France, or to Edith +Cavell, or to those women and those babies on the _Lusitania_. + +He did not make war cruel--it already was that; but he has kept it +cruel. War with him is not an emotional pastime; not a time for +hysterical lip service to his flag; not a time for fuss and feathers. +And, most of all, it is to him not a time for any display of mawkish, +maudlin forbearance to his foe; but, instead, it is a deadly serious, +deadly terrible business, to the successful prosecution of which he and +his rulers, and his government, and his whole system of life have been +earnestly and sincerely dedicated through a generation of preparation, +mental as well as physical. + + + + +IV + + +When I think back on those first stages--and in some respects the most +tragic stages--of the great war, I do not see it as a thing of pomp and +glory, of splendid panorama, pitched on a more impressive scale than any +movement ever was in all the history of mankind. I do not, in +retrospect, see the sunlight glinting on the long, unending, weaving +lanes of bayonets; or the troops pouring in grey streams, like molten +quicksilver, along all those dusty highroads of Northern Europe; or the +big guns belching; or the artillery horses going galloping into +action; or the trenches; or the camps; or the hospitals; or the +battlefields. I see it as it is reflected in certain little, detached +pictures--small-focused, and incidental to the great horror of which +they were an unconsidered part--but which, to me, typify, most fitly of +all, what war means when waged by the rote and rule of Prussian +militarism upon the civilian populace of an invaded country. + +I see again the little red-bearded priest of Louvain who met us on the +day we first entered that town; who took us out of the panic of the +street where the inhabitants fluttered about in aimless terror, like +frightened fowl in a barnyard; and who led the way for us through a +little wooden gateway, set in the face of a high brick wall. It was as +though we were in another world then, instead of the little world of +panic and distress we had just quit. About a neglected tennis court grew +a row of pear trees, and under a laden grape arbour at the back sat four +more priests, all in rusty black gowns. They got up from where they sat +and came and spoke to us, and took us into a little cellar room, where +they gave us a bottle of their homemade wine to drink and handfuls of +their ripened pears to eat, and tried to point out to us, on a map, +where they thought the oncoming Germans might be, none of us knowing +that already uhlan scouts were entering the next street but one. As we +were leaving, the eldest priest took me by the coat lapels and, with his +kind, faded old eyes brimming and his gentle old face quivering, he +said to me in broken English: + +"My son, it is not right that war should come to Belgium. We had no part +in the quarrel of these, our great neighbours. My son, we are not a bad +people here--do not believe them should they tell you so. For I tell you +we are a good people. We are a very good people. All the week my people +work very hard, and on Sunday they go to church; and then perhaps they +go for a walk in the fields. And that, to them, is all they know of +life. + +"My son," he said, "you come from a great country--you come from the +greatest of all the countries. Surely your country, which is so great +and so strong, will not let my little country perish from off the face +of the earth?" + +Because we had no answer for him we went away. And when, six weeks +later, I returned to ruined and devastated Louvain, I picked my way +through the hideous wreckage of the streets to the little monastery +again. Behold! the brick wall was a broken heap of wrecked, charred +masonwork; and the pear trees were naked stumps, which stood up out of +a clay waste; and the little cellar room, where we ate our pears and +drank our wine, was a hole in the ground now, full of ill-smelling +rubbish and fouled water, with the rotted and bloated corpse of a dead +horse floating in the water, poisoning the air with the promise of +pestilence. And the priests who once had lived there were gone; and none +in all that town knew where they had gone. + +Always, too, when thinking of the war, I think of the refugees I saw, +but mostly of those I saw after Antwerp had fallen in the early days of +October and I was skirting Holland on my way back out of Germany to the +English Channel. I had seen enough refugees before then, God knows!--men +and women and children, old men and old women and little children and +babies in arms, fleeing by the lights of their own burning houses over +rainy, wind-swept, muddy roads; vast caravans of homeless misery, whose +members marched on and on until they dropped from exhaustion. And when +they had rested a while at the miry roadside, with no beds beneath them +but the earth and no shelters above them but the black umbrellas to +which they clung, they got up and went on again, with no destination in +view and no goal ahead; but only knowing, I suppose, that what might lie +in front of them could not be worse than what they left behind them. But +never--until after Antwerp--did there seem to be so many of them, and +never did their plight seem so pitiable. Over every road that ran up out +of Belgium into Holland--and that in this populous corner of Europe +meant a road every little while--they poured all day in thick, jostling, +unending, unbroken streams. I marked how the sides of every wayside +building along the Dutch frontier was scrawled over with the names of +hundreds of refugees, who already had passed that way; and, along with +their names, the names of their own people, from whom they were +separated in the haste and terror of flight, and who--by one chance in a +thousand--might come that way and read what was there written, and +follow on. + +This was the larger picture. Now for a small corner of the canvas: I +remember a squalid little cowshed in a little Dutch town on the border, +just before dusk of a wet, raw autumnal night. Under the dripping eaves +of that cowshed stood an old man--a very old man. He must have been all +of eighty. His garments were sopping wet, and all that he owned now of +this world's goods rested at his feet, tied up in the rags of an old red +tablecloth. In one withered, trembling old hand he held a box of +matches, and in the other a piece of chalk. With one hand he scratched +match after match; and with the other, on the wall of that little +cowshed, he wrote, over and over and over again, his name; and beneath +it the name of the old wife from whom he was separated--doubtlessly +forever. + +Possibly these things might have come to pass in any war, whether or not +Germans were concerned in making that war; probably they should be +included among the inevitable by-products of the institution called +warfare. That, however, did not make them the less sorrowful. + + + + +V + + +The point I am trying to make is this: That, seeing such sights, and a +thousand more like them, I could picture the same things--and a thousand +worse things--happening in my own country. With better reason, I to-day +can picture them as happening in my own country; and in all fairness I +go further than that and say that I can conceive them as being all the +more likely to happen should the invading forces come at us under that +design of a black vulture which is known as the Imperial Prussian Eagle. +Given similar conditions and similar opportunities, and I can see +Holyoke, Massachusetts, or Charleston, South Carolina, razed in smoking +ruins, as Louvain or as Dinant was. I can see the mayor of Baltimore +being put to death by drum-head court-martial because some inflamed +civilian of his town fired from a cottage window at a Pomeranian +grenadier. I can see in Pennsylvania congressmen and judges and +clergymen and G. A. R. veterans held as hostages and as potential +victims of the firing squad, in case some son or some grandson of old +John Burns, of Gettysburg, not regularly enrolled, takes up his shotgun +in defence of his homestead. I can see a price put on the head of some +modern Molly Pitcher, and a military prison waiting for some latter-day +Barbara Frietchie. For we must remember that what we Americans call +patriots the anointed War Lord calls _franc-tireurs_, meaning +bushwhackers. + +I do not believe I personally can be charged with an evinced bias +against the German Army, as based on what I saw of its operations in the +opening months of the war. Because I had an admiration for the courage +and the fortitude of the German common soldier, and because I expressed +that admiration, I was charged with being pro-German by persons who +seemingly did not understand or want to understand that a spectator may +admire the individual without in the least sympathising with the causes +which sent him into the field. And at a time when this country was +filled with stories of barbarities committed upon Belgian civilians by +German soldiers--stories of the mutilating of babies, of the raping of +women, of the torturing of old men--I was one of five experienced +newspapermen who, all of our own free will and not under duress or +coercion, signed a statement in which we severally and jointly stated +that, in our experiences when travelling with or immediately behind the +German columns through upward of a hundred miles of Belgian territory, +we had been unable to discover good evidence of a single one of these +alleged atrocities. Nor did we. + +What I tried to point out at the time--in the fall of 1914--and what I +would point out again in justice to those who now are our enemies, is +that identically the same accounts of atrocities which were told in +England and in America as having been perpetrated by Germans upon +Belgians and Frenchmen, were simultaneously repeated in Germany as +having been perpetrated by Belgians and Frenchmen upon German nuns and +German wounded; and were just as firmly believed in Germany as in +America and Britain, and had, as I veritably believe, just as little +foundation of fact in one quarter as in the other quarters. + +Indeed, I am willing to go still further and say, because of the +rigorous discipline by which the German common soldier is bound, that in +the German occupation of hostile territory opportunities for the +individual brute or the individual degenerate to commit excesses against +the individual victim were greatly reduced. Of course there must have +been sporadic instances of hideous acts--there always have been where +men went to war; but I have never been able to bring myself to believe +that such acts could have been a part of a systematic or organised +campaign of frightfulness. There was plenty of the frightfulness without +these added horrors. + +But I was an eyewitness to crimes which, measured by the standards of +humanity and civilisation, impressed me as worse than any individual +excess, any individual outrage, could ever have been or can ever be; +because these crimes indubitably were instigated on a wholesale basis by +order of officers of rank, and must have been carried out under their +personal supervision, direction and approval. Briefly, what I saw was +this: I saw wide areas of Belgium and France in which not a penny's +worth of wanton destruction had been permitted to occur, in which the +ripe pears hung untouched upon the garden walls; and I saw other wide +areas where scarcely one stone had been left to stand upon another; +where the fields were ravaged; where the male villagers had been shot in +squads; where the miserable survivors had been left to den in holes, +like wild beasts. + +Taking the physical evidence offered before our own eyes, and +buttressing it with the statements made to us, not only by natives but +by German soldiers and German officers, we could reach but one +conclusion, which was that here, in such-and-such a place, those in +command had said to the troops: "Spare this town and these people!" And +there they had said: "Waste this town and shoot these people!" And +here the troops had discriminately spared, and there they had +indiscriminately wasted, in exact accordance with the word of their +superiors. + + + + +VI + + +Doubtlessly you read the published extracts from diaries taken off the +bodies of killed or captured German soldiers in the first year of the +war. Didn't you often read where this soldier or that, setting down his +own private thoughts, had lamented at having been required to put his +hand to the task of killing and destroying? But, from this same source, +did you ever get evidence that any soldier had actually revolted against +this campaign of cruelty, and had refused to burn the homes of helpless +civilians or to slay unresisting noncombatants? You did not, and for a +very good reason: Because that rebellious soldier would never have lived +long enough to write down the record of his humanity--he would have been +shot dead by the revolver of his own captain or his own lieutenant. + +I saw German soldiers marching through a wrecked and ravished +countryside, singing their German songs about the home place, and the +Christmas tree, and the Rhine maiden--creatures so full of sentiment +that they had no room in their souls for sympathy. And, by the same +token, I saw German soldiers dividing their rations with hungry +Belgians. They divided their rations with these famished ones because it +was not _verboten_--because there was no order to the contrary. Had +there been an order to the contrary, those poor women and those scrawny +children might have starved, and no German soldier, whatever his private +feelings, would have dared offer to them a crust of bread or a bone of +beef. Of that I am very sure. + +And it seemed to me then, and it seems to me now, a most dangerous thing +for all the peoples of the earth, and a most evil thing, that into the +world should come a scheme of military government so hellishly contrived +and so exactly directed that, by the flirt of a colonel's thumb, a +thousand men may, at will, be transformed from kindly, courageous, manly +soldiers into relentless, ruthless executioners and incendiaries; and, +by another flirt of that supreme and arrogant thumb, be converted back +again into decent men. + + + + +VII + + +In peace the mental docility of the German, his willingness to accept an +order unquestioningly and mechanically to obey it, may be a virtue, as +we reckon racial traits of a people among their virtues; in war this +same trait becomes a vice. In peace it makes him yet more peaceful; in +war it gives to his manner of waging war an added sinister menace. + +It is that very menace which must confront the American troopers who may +be sent abroad for service. It is that very menace which must confront +our people at home in the event that the enemy shall get near enough to +our coasts to bombard our shore cities, or should he succeed in landing +an expeditionary force upon American soil. + +When I first came back from the war front I marvelled that sensible +persons so often asked me what sort of people the Germans were, as +though Germans were a stranger race, like Patagonians or the South Sea +Islanders, living in some remote and untravelled corner of the globe. I +felt like telling them that Germans in Germany were like the Germans +they knew in America--in the main, God-fearing, orderly, hard-working, +self-respecting citizens. But through these intervening months I have +changed my mind; to-day I should make a different answer. I would say, +to him who asked that question now, that the same tractability of +temperament which, under the easy-going, flexible workings of our +American plan of living makes the German-born American so readily +conform to his physical and metaphysical surroundings here, and makes +his progeny so soon to amalgamate with our fused and conglomerated +stock, has the effect, in his Fatherland, of all the more easily and all +the more firmly filling his mind and shaping his deeds in conformity +with the exact and rigorous demands of the Prussianism that has been +shackled upon him since his empire ceased to be a group of petty +states. + +We have got to remember, then, that the Germany with which we have +broken is not the Germany of Heine and Goethe and Haeckel and Beethoven; +not the Germany which gave us Steuben in the Revolutionary War, and +Sigel and Schurz in the Civil War; not the Germany of the chivalrous, +lovable Saxon, or yet of the music-loving, home-loving Bavarian; not the +Germany which was the birthplace of the kindly, honourable, industrious, +patriotic German-speaking neighbour round the corner from you--but the +fanatical, tyrannical, power-mad, blood-and-iron Prussianised Germany of +Bismarck and Von Bernhardi, of the Crown Prince and the Junkers--that +passionate Prussianised Germany which for forty years through the +instrumentality of its ruling classes--not necessarily its Kaiser, but +its real ruling classes--has been jealously striving to pervert every +native ounce of its scientific and its inventive and its creative genius +out of the paths of progress and civilisation and to jam it into the +grooves of the greatest autocratic machine, the greatest organism for +killing off human beings, the greatest engine of misbegotten and +misdirected efficiency that was ever created in the world. Because we +have an admiration for one of these two Germanys is no more a reason why +we should abate our indignation and our detestation for the other +Germany than that because a man loves a cheery blaze upon his +hearthstone he should refuse to fight a forest fire. + +We have got to remember another thing. If our oversea observations of +this war abroad have taught us anything, they should have taught us that +the German Army--and when I say army I mean in this case, not its men +but its officers, since in the German Army the officers are essentially +the brain and the power and the motive force directing the unthinking, +blindly obedient mass beneath them--that the German Army is not an army +of good sportsmen. And that, I take it, is an even more important +consideration upon the field of battle than it is upon the athletic +field. As the saying goes, the Germans don't play the game. It is as +inconceivable to imagine German officers going in for baseball or +football or cricket as it is to imagine American volunteers marching the +goose step or to imagine Englishmen relishing the cut-and-dried +calisthenics of a _Turnverein._ + +The Germans are not an outdoor race; they are not given to playing +outdoor sports and abiding by the rules of those sports, as Englishmen +and as Americans are. And in war--that biggest of all outdoor games--it +stands proved against them that they do not play according to the rules, +except they be rules of their own making. It may be argued that the +French are not an outdoor race or a sport-loving race, as we conceive +sports. But, on the other hand, the Frenchman is essentially romantic +and essentially dramatic, and, whether in war or in victory afterward, +he is likely to exhibit the magnanimous and the generous virtues rather +than the cruel and the unkindly ones, because, as we all know, it is +easier to dramatise one's good impulses than one's evil ones. + +Now the German, as has recently been shown, is neither dramatic nor +sportsmanlike. He is a greedy winner and he is a bad loser--a most +remarkably bad loser. Good sportsmen would not have broken Belgium into +bloody bits because Belgium stood between them and their goal; good +sportsmen would not have sung the Hymn of Hate, or made "_Gott Strafe +England!_" their battle cry; good sportsmen would not have shot Edith +Cavell or sunk the _Lusitania_. Good sportsmen would not have packed the +helpless men and boys of a conquered and a prostrate land off as +captives into an enforced servitude worse than African slavery; would +not wantonly have wasted La Fère and Chauny and Ham, and a hundred other +French towns, as they did in March and April of this year, for no +conceivable reason than that they must surrender these towns back into +the hand of the enemy; would not have cut down the little orchard trees +nor shovelled dung into the drinking wells; would not, while ostensibly +at peace with us, have plotted to destroy our industrial plants and to +plant the seeds of sedition among our foreign-born citizens, and to +dismember our country, parceling it out between a brown race in Mexico +and a yellow race in Japan. Good sports do not do these things, and +Germany did all of them. That means something. + + + + +VIII + + +Having spread the gospel of force for so long, Prussianised Germany can +understand but one counter-argument--force. We must give her back blow +for blow--a harder blow in return for each blow she gives us. "Thrice is +he armed that hath his quarrel just"; and our quarrel is just. All the +same, to make war successfully we must make it with a whole heart. We +must hold it to be a holy war; we must preach a jihad, remembering +always, now that the Chinese Empire is a republic, now that Russia by +revolution has thrown off the chains of autocracy, that we are fighting +not only to punish the enemy for wrongs inflicted and insults +overpatiently endured; not only to make the seas free to honest +commerce; not only for the protection of our flag and our ships and the +lives of our people at home and abroad--but along with England, +France--yes, and Russia--are fighting for the preservation of the +principles of constitutional and representative government against those +few remaining crowned heads who hold by the divine right of kings, and +who believe that man was created not a self-governing creature but a +vassal. + +Merely because we are willing to give of our wealth and our granaries +and our steel mills, we cannot expect to have an honourable share in +this war, and to share as an equal in its final settlement. We must risk +something more precious than money; something more needful than +munitions; we must risk our manhood. We cannot expect England's navy to +stand between us and harm for our coasts, and France's worn battalions +to bear the brunt of the trench work. + +Knowing nothing of military expediency, I yet believe that, for the +moral effect upon the world and for our own position, when the time for +making peace comes it would be better for us, rather than the securing +of our own soil against attack or invasion, that an American flag should +wave over American troops in Flanders; that a Texas cow-puncher should +lead a forlorn hope in France; that a Connecticut clockmaker should +invent a device which will blunt the fangs of that stinging adder of the +sea, the U-boat, and--who knows?--perhaps scotch the poison snake +altogether. + +Maybe it is true that, in our mistaken forbearance, we have failed and +come short. Maybe we have endured too long and too patiently; we can +atone for all that. But---- + +Without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins. + + + + +IX + + +I am coming now to what seems to me to be the most important +consideration of all. In this war upon which we have entered our chief +enemy is a nation firmly committed to the belief that whatever it may do +is most agreeable in the sight of God. It is firmly committed to the +belief that the acts of its Kaiser, its Crown Prince, its government, +its statesmen, its generals and its armies are done in accordance with +the will and the purposes of God. And, by the same token, it is +committed, with equal firmness, to the conviction that the designs and +the deeds of all the nations and all the peoples opposed to their nation +must perforce be obnoxious to God. By the processes of their own +peculiar theology--a theology which blossomed and began to bear its +fruit after the war started, but for which the seed had been sown long +before--God is not Our God but Their God. He is not the common creator +of mankind, but a special Creator of Teutons. He is a German God. For +you to say this would sound in American ears like sacrilege. For me to +write it down here smacks of blasphemy and impiety. But to the +German--in Germany--it is sound religion, founded upon the Gospels and +the Creed, proven in the Scriptures, abundantly justified in the +performances and the intentions of an anointed and a sanctified few +millions among all the unnumbered millions who breed upon the earth. + +Now here, by way of a beginning, is the proof of it. This proof is to be +found in a collection of original poems published by a German pastor, +the Reverend Herr Doktor Konsistorialrat D. Vorwerk. In the first +edition of his book there occurred a paraphrase of the Lord's Prayer, of +which the following are the last three petitions and the close: + + "Though the warrior's bread be scanty, do Thou work daily death and + tenfold woe unto the enemy. Forgive in merciful long-suffering each + bullet and each blow which misses its mark! Lead us not into the + temptation of letting our wrath be too tame in carrying out Thy + divine judgment! Deliver us and our Ally from the infernal Enemy + and his servants on earth. Thine is the kingdom, The German Land; + may we, by aid of Thy steel-clad hand, achieve the power and the + glory." + +From subsequent editions of the work of Pastor Vorwerk this prayer was +omitted. It is said to have been denounced as blasphemous by a +religious journal, published in Germany--but not in Berlin. But +evidently no one within the German Empire, either in authority or out of +it, found any fault with the worthy pastor's sentiment that the +Germans, above all other races--except possibly the Turks, who +appear to have been taken into the Heavenly fold by a special +dispensation--are particularly favoured and endowed of God, and +enjoy His extraordinary--one might almost be tempted to say His +private--guardianship, love and care. For in varying forms this +fetishism is expressed in scores of places. Consider this example, which +cannot have lost much of its original force in translation: + + "How can it be that Germany is surrounded by nothing but enemies + and has not a single friend? Is not this Germany's own fault? No! + Do you not know that Prince of Hades, whose name is Envy, and who + unites scoundrels and sunders heroes? Let us, therefore, rejoice + that Envy has thus risen up against us; it only shows that God has + exalted and richly blessed us. Think of Him who was hanged on the + Cross and seemed forsaken of God, and had to tread in such + loneliness His path to victory! My German people, even if thy road + be strewn with thorns and beset by enemies, press onward, filled + with defiance and confidence. The heavenly ladder is still + standing. Thou and thy God, ye are the majority!" + +I have quoted these extracts from the printed and circulated book of an +ordained and reputable German clergyman, and presumably also a popular +and respected German clergyman, because I honestly believe them to be +not the individual mouthings of an isolated fanatic, but the voice of an +enormous number of his fellow countrymen, expressing a conviction that +has come to be common among them since August, 1914. + +I believe, further, that they should be quoted because knowledge of them +will the better help our own people here in the United States to +understand the temper of a vast group of our enemies; will help us to +understand the motives behind some of the forms of hostility and +reprisal that undoubtedly they are going to attempt to inflict upon the +United States; help us, I hope, to understand that, upon our part, in +waging this war an over-measure of forbearance, a mistaken charity, or a +faith in the virtue of his fair promises is only wasted when it is +visited upon an adversary who, for his part, is upborne by the perverted +spiritualism and the degenerated self-idolatry of a Mad Mullah. It is +all very well to pour oil on troubled waters; it is foolishness to pour +it on wildfire. + + + + +X + + +In this same connection it may not be amiss for us to consider the +predominant and predominating viewpoints of another and an equally +formidable group of the foemen. In October, 1913, nearly a year before +Germany started the World War, one of the recognised leaders of the +association who called themselves "Young Germany" wrote in the official +organ, the accepted mouthpiece of the Junker set and the Crown Prince's +favoured adherents, a remarkable statement--that is, it would have been +a remarkable statement coming from any other source than the source from +whence it did come. It read as follows: + + "War is the noblest and holiest expression of human activity. For + us, too, the great glad hour of battle will strike. Still and deep + in the German heart must live the joy of battle and the longing for + it. Let us ridicule to the uttermost the old women in breeches who + fear war and deplore it as cruel or revolting. War is beautiful.... + When here on earth a battle is won by German arms and the faithful + dead ascend to heaven, a Potsdam lance corporal will call the guard + to the door and 'Old Fritz,' springing from his golden throne, will + give the command to present arms. That is the heaven of Young + Germany!" + +The likening of Heaven to a place of eternal beatitude, populated by +German soldiers, with a Potsdam lance corporal succeeding Saint Peter at +the gate, and "Old Fritz"--Frederick the Great--in sole and triumphant +occupancy of the Golden Throne, where, according to the conceptions of +the most Christian races, The Almighty sits, is a picture requiring no +comment. + +It speaks for itself. Also it speaks for the paranoia of militant +Prussianism. + +I think I am in position to tell something of the growth of these +sentiments among the Germans. As I stated on almost the first page of +this little book, it fell to my lot to be on German soil in September +and October of that first year of the Great War, before there was any +prospect of our entering it as a belligerent Power, and when the +civilian populace, having been exalted by the series of unbroken +victories that had marked the first stage of hostilities for the German +forces, east and west, was suffering from the depressions occasioned by +the defeat before Paris, the retreat from the Marne back to the Aisne, +and finally by the growing fear that Italy, instead of coming into the +conflict as an ally of the two Teutonic Empires, might, if she became +an active combatant at all, cast in her lot with France and with +England. + +It was from civilians that I got a sense of the intellectual motive +powers behind the mass of civilians in Rhenish Prussia. It was from them +that I learned something of the real German meaning of the German word +_Kultur_. In view of recent and present developments on our side of the +ocean, culminating in our entry into the war, I am constrained to +believe I may perhaps, in my own small way, contribute to American +readers some slight measure of appreciation of what that _Kultur_ means +and may mean as applied to other and lesser nations by its creators, +protagonists and proud proprietors. + +I heard nothing of _Kultur_ from the German military men with whom I had +theretofore come into contact in Belgium and in Northern France, and +whom I still was meeting daily both in their social and in their +official capacities. So far as one might judge by their language and +their behaviour they, almost without an exception, were heartily at war +for a hearty love of war--the officers, I mean. To them the war--the +successful prosecution of it, regardless of the cost; the immediate +glory, and the final ascendancy over all Europe and Asia of the German +arms--was everything. With them nothing else counted but that--except, +of course, the ultimate humbling of Great Britain in the dust. Seemingly +the woful side of the situation, the losses and the sufferings and the +horrors, concerned them not a whit. War for war's sake; that was their +religion; never mind what had gone before; never mind what might come +after. To make war terribly and successfully, to make it with +frightfulness and with a frightful speed, was their sole aim. + +Never did I hear them, or any one of them, openly invoking the aid of +the Creator. They were content with the tools forged for their hands by +their military overlords. As for the men in the ranks, if they did any +thinking on their own account it was not visible upon the surface. Their +business was to use their bodies, not their heads; their trade to obey +orders. They knew that business and they followed that trade. And +already poor little wasted Belgium stood a smoking, bloody monument to +their thorough, painstaking and most efficient craftsmanship. + +Nor, except among the green troops which had not yet been under fire, +was there any expressed hatred, either with officers or men, for the +opposing soldiers. During our experiences in the battle lines, and +directly behind the battle lines, in the weeks immediately preceding +the time of which I purpose to write, we had aimed at a plan of +ascertaining, with perfect accuracy, whether the German forces we +encountered had seen any service except theoretical service. If we ran +across a command whose members spoke contemptuously of the French or the +English or the Belgian soldiers, we might make sure in our own minds +that here were men who had yet to come to grips at close range with +their enemy. + +On the other hand, troops who actually had seen hard fighting rarely +failed to evince a sincere respect, and in some instances a sort of +reluctant admiration, for the courage and the steadfastness of their +adversaries. They were convinced--and that I suppose was only +natural--of the superiority of the German soldiers, man for man, over +the soldiers of any other nation; but they had been cured of the earlier +delusion that most of the stalwart heroes were to be found on the one +side and most of the weaklings and cravens on the other. + +Likewise the hot furnaces of battle had smelted much of the hate out of +their hearts. The slag was gone; what remained was the right metal of +soldierliness. I imagine this has been true in a greater or less degree +of all so-called civilised wars where brave and resolute men have fought +against brave and resolute men. Certainly I know it to have been true of +the first periods of this present war. + + + + +XI + + +But fifty or a hundred miles away on German soil, among the home-biding +populace, was a different story. It was there I found out about +_Kultur_. It was there I first began to realise that, not content with +assuming a direct and intimate partnership with Providence, civilian +Germany was taking Providence under its patronage, was remodelling its +conceptions of Deity to be purely and solely a German Deity. + +That more or less ribald jingle called "Me und Gott!" aimed at the +Kaiser and frequently repeated in this country a few years before, had, +in the face of what we now beheld, altogether lost the force of its +one-time humorous application. As we appraised the prevalent sentiment, +it had, in the sober, serious consciousness of otherwise sane men and +women, become the truth and less than the truth. + +Any Christian race, going to war in what it esteems to be a righteous +cause, prays to God to bless its campaigns with victory and to sustain +its arms with fortitude. It had remained for this Christian race to +assume that the God to whom they addressed their petitions was their own +peculiar God, and that His Kingdom on Earth was Germany and Germany +only; and that His chosen people now and forevermore would be Germans +and Germans only. + +This is not a wild statement. Trustworthy evidence in support of it +will presently be offered. + +We met some weirdly interesting persons during our enforced sojourn +there in Aix la Chapelle in September and October of that year. There +was, for example, the invalided officer who never spoke of England or +the English that he did not grind his teeth together audibly. I have +never yet been able to decide whether this was a bit of theatricalism +designed to make more forcible than the words he uttered his detestation +for the country which, most of all, had balked Germany in her designs +upon France and upon the mastery of the seas--a sort of dental +punctuation for his spoken anathemas, as it were--or whether it was an +involuntary expression of his feelings. In either event he grated his +teeth very loudly, very frequently and very effectively. + +There was the young German petty officer, also on sick leave, who told +me with great earnestness and professed to believe the truth of it that +two captured English surgeons had been summarily executed because in +their surgical kits had been found instruments especially designed for +the purpose of gouging out the eyes of wounded and helpless Germans. + +And there was the spectacled scientist-author-spy, who dropped in on two +of us one morning at the hotel where we were quartered, and who +thereafter favoured us at close intervals with many hours of his +company. It was from this person more than from any other that I +acquired what I believed to be a fairly adequate conception of the views +held then and thereafter and now by an overwhelming majority of educated +Prussians, trained in the Prussian school of thought and propaganda. + +I cannot now recall this person's name, though I knew it well at the +time; but I do recall his appearance. He was tall and slender, with red +hair; a lean, keen intellectual face; and a pair of weak, pale-blue +eyes, looking out through heavy convex glasses. He spoke English, French +and Danish with fluency. He had been a world traveller and had written +books on the subject of travel, which he showed us. He had been an +inventor of electrical devices and had written at least one book on the +subject of electric-lighting development. He had been an amateur +photographer of some note evidently, and had written rather extensively +on that subject. + +His present employment was not so easily discerned, though it was quite +plain that, like nearly every intelligent civilian in that part of +Germany, he was engaged upon some service more or less closely related +to the military and governmental activities of the empire. He wore the +brassard of the Red Cross on his arm, it is true, but apparently had +nothing really to do with hospital or ambulance work. And he had at his +disposal a military automobile, in which he made frequent and more or +less extended excursions into the occupied territory of France and +Belgium. + +After one or two visits from him we decided that, by some higher +authority, he had been assigned to the dual task of ascertaining our own +views regarding Germany's part in the conflict and of influencing our +minds if possible to accept the views he and his class held. He may +have had an even more important mission; we thought sometimes that he +perhaps was doing a little espionage work, either on his own account or +under orders, because he began to seek our company about the time we +noted a cessation of clumsy activities on the part of those two +preposterously mysterious sleuths of the German Secret Service who, +until then, had been watching us pretty closely. + +Be this as it may, he manifested a gentlemanly but persistent curiosity +regarding our observations and regarding the articles which he knew we +were writing for American consumption. And meantime he lost no +opportunity of preaching into our ears the theories and the dogmas of +his Prussianized _Kultur_. + +I remember that, on almost his first call upon us, either my companion +or myself remarked upon the united and the whole-hearted devotion the +civilian populace of the province, from the youngest to the oldest, +exhibited for the German cause. Instantly his posture changed. From the +polite interviewer he turned into the zealot who preaches a holy cause. +His lensed eyes became pallid blue sparks; and he said: + +"Surely--and why not? For forty-odd years we have been educating our +people to believe that only through war and through conquest could our +nation achieve its place in the sun--elbowroom for its industrial and +its spiritual development. Germany is a giant--the giant of the universe +and she must have breathing space; and only by the swallowing up of +smaller states can she get that breathing space. Almost at the mother's +breast we teach our babies that. Do you know, my friends, what the first +question is, in the first primer of geography, which German children +hear when they enter school? + +"No? Then I will tell you. The first question is 'What is Germany?' And +the answer is 'My Fatherland--a country entirely surrounded by Enemies!' + +"So you see, gentlemen, we start at the cradle and at the kindergarten +to teach our young people what it means to live with Russia on one side +of them and with France and Belgium and Britain on the other. They +cannot forget for one instant the task that lies before them. Their +educators--parents, teachers, pastors, military instructors, officials +of every rank and every grade--never let them forget it." + + + + +XII + + +Even more illuminating were his views with regard to the position of +Germany in Europe before the war began. He admitted that for years, by +the neighbour-peoples, Germany had been feared and distrusted. This, he +insisted, was not Germany's fault, but a fear and a distrust born of +envy and malice among deteriorated and decaying nations for a land +which, so far as Europe, at least, was concerned, was the mother of all +the virtues and all the great benevolent impulses of the century. He +denied that Germany had ever been overbearing or threatening; denied +that anything except jealousy could lie at the back of the general +suspicion directed against Prussia, not only by aliens but--before the +war began--by Bavaria and by Saxony as well. + +"Germany," he said to me one day, "has earned the right to rule this +Hemisphere; and Germany is going to rule it! When we have conquered our +enemies, as conquer them we shall--when we have implanted among them our +own German culture, our own German institutions and our own German form +of government, which surely we also shall do--they will, in succeeding +generations, be the better and the happier for it. They will come to +know, then, that the guns of our fleets and the rifles of our soldiers +brought them blessings in disguise. Out of their present sufferings and +their future humiliations will spring up the benefits of German +civilisation. + +"At first they may not want to accept our German civilisation. They will +have to accept it--at the point of the bayonet if necessary. If it is +required that these petty lesser states should be exterminated +altogether, we shall not hesitate before that task either. They are +decadents, dying now of dry rot and degeneracy; better that they should +be dead altogether than that the spread of German _Kultur_ through the +world should be checked or diverted from its course. We shall teach the +world that the individual exists for the good of the state, rather than +that the state exists for the individual." + +To the miseries that had been inflicted upon Belgium, and which he +himself had had opportunity to view at first hand, he gave no heed--this +scholarly pundit-preacher of the tenets of Prussianism. With a wave of +his hand he dismissed the question of the rights and wrongs of the +German invasion of Belgium. He wasted no sympathy upon Louvain, sacked +and pillaged and burned, or upon Dinant, razed to the ground for the +most part, and with seven hundred of its male inhabitants put to death +on one slaughter-day in punitive punishment for acts of guerrilla +warfare alleged to have been committed by civilians against Germans +coming upon them in uniform. + +Yet I do not think that, in most of the relations of life, he was a +cruel or even an unkind man. He merely saw Belgium through glasses made +in Germany. He explained his attitude substantially after this fashion, +as I now recall the sense and the phrasing of his words: + +"What difference does it make to posterity that we have had to destroy a +few hotbeds of ignorance and shoot a few thousand undisciplined, +uneducated, turbulent persons? What difference though we may have to +continue to destroy yet more Belgian towns and shoot yet more Belgian +civilians? Ultimately the results of our operations are bound to redound +to the greater glory of the Greater German Empire, which means European +civilisation. + +"My friend, do you know that nearly a quarter of the inhabitants of +Belgium are illiterates, as you would put it in English--_Unalphabets_, +as we Germans say? Well, that is true--a quarter of them can neither +read nor write. In Germany only a fractional part of one per cent of our +people are illiterate to that extent. We have taken Belgium by force of +arms and we are never going to give it up. Already it is a province of +the German Empire. + +"When our lawgivers have followed our soldiers across the expanded +frontiers of our Empire; when we have made the German language the +language of annexed Belgium; when we have introduced our incomparably +superior methods into all departments of Belgian life; when we have +taught all the Belgians to speak the German tongue, and have required of +them that they do speak it--then these Belgians, as Germans, will be +better off than ever they could have been as Belgians. Never fear; we +shall know how to handle them. + +"With Alsace and Lorraine we were too mild for their own good. With +Belgium we shall be stern; but we shall be just. It is the predestined +fate of Belgium that she should become a German possession and a German +territory. Geography and destiny both point the way for us, and we +Germans never turn from the duties intrusted to us by our God and our +Kaiser! We mean to teach these lesser peoples before we are through that +the individual exists for the good of the State, not, as some of them +profess to believe, that the State exists for the good of the +individual." + + + + +XIII + + +It never seemed to occur to him that Belgians or Frenchmen or Dutchmen +might personally prefer to keep on being Belgians or Frenchmen or +Dutchmen, and might have some rights in the matter; indeed might prefer +to die rather than live under a system intolerable to human beings +reared outside the scope of Prussian influence. So far as I might judge, +this never occurred to any of the less eloquent but equally ardent +defenders of this peculiar brand of _Kultur_ with whom I talked during +that fall in the Rhineland country. + +We must have been blind then, my companion and I--yes, and deaf too; for +we diagnosed this bigotry as evidences of an egomania, probably confined +to a few hundreds or a few thousands among the German-speaking peoples. +In the light of what has happened since we all know that the disease +affected a whole nation, and was a disease of which, as yet, the +frequent upsettings of their original programme and the absolute +certainty that the programme itself can never be carried out until +Europe and America both are graveyards have not to any very noticeable +extent served to operate as a cure. + +In those early, optimistic days these paranoiacs conceived of a world +that should sometime be altogether Prussianised. Their vision was not +bounded by the seas about their own Continent; it extended to other +Continents, our own included. That dream is over and done with. What +they have yet to learn--and they will only be taught it at the muzzle of +guns--is that a civilisation cannot endure when it is half Prussian and +half free. It is my understanding that this country, along with ten or +twelve others, is now committed to the task of enforcing this lesson +upon the consciousness of the only confederation of enemies to a +representative form of government now left upon either hemisphere. + + + + +XIV + + +A prophet is nearly always a bore. He is apt to be tiresome when +expounding his predictions, and likely to become a common nuisance +should his predictions come true. Indeed, the I-told-you-so person is +oftentimes a worse pest than the I-am-now-telling-you-so individual. I +have no desire to assume either rôle; but here lately I have not been +able to restrain my satisfaction at finding, as I believed, that two of +my own private convictions are about to be justified by the accomplished +fact. As a result of all that I saw and heard in the war zone, more than +two years and a half ago, I made up my mind to the probable consummation +of these contingencies--namely: + +FIRST: That, despite her earlier successes, despite all her preparedness +and all her efficiency and all her valour, Germany eventually would be +defeated as the Southern Confederacy was defeated--by being bled white +and starved thin. + +SECOND: That when to Germany's rulers this prospect became certain they +would with deliberate intent embroil the United States in the conflict +as an avowed and declared enemy, in order that the men who drove Germany +to the slaughter might save their faces before their own people, at the +front and at home, by saying to them in effect: "We were strong enough +to beat all Europe and all Asia; we were not strong enough to beat the +supreme Power of the New World too; we, with our allies, could not +withstand the combined forces of the whole earth." + +Though Germany is still very far, one imagines, from the point of +complete exhaustion, it is not to be denied that she is bleeding white +and starving thin. And, as all fair-minded patriotic men on this side of +the ocean agree, she did, by a persistent campaign of aggressions +against our flag, and by murdering our people on the high seas, and by +plotting against our industries and our national integrity, finally +force us into the war. + +Having been forced into the war, as we are, it is well that our people +should know to the fullest possible degree not only what they are +fighting for--the preservation of democracy in the world, for one +thing--but that likewise they should know and in that knowledge +recognise the danger to us, of the mental forces operating behind the +military arm of our national enemy. + +I think they should know that in the minds of these self-idolaters, who +have laid claim to Creator and to creation as their own ordained +possessions, we shall stand in no different light than the Belgians +stand, or the Serbians, or the Poles, or the people of Northern France. +Upon us, if the chance is vouchsafed them, they would visit a heaping +measure of the same wrath they poured on those invaded and broken +nations of Europe, showing to Americans no more mercy than they showed +to them. + +I deem it my duty, therefore, to write what already I have written in +this little book, and, before closing it, to append certain quotations, +as particularly illuminating evidences of the besetting mania that has +been fastened upon the brains of an otherwise rational race of our +fellow beings through two generations of crafty implanting and fostering +by greater maniacs, wearing crowns and shoulder straps, and--yes, the +livery of Our Lord and Master. + +For the quotations from the poetic utterances of the Reverend Doctor +Vorwerk, which appeared in preceding paragraphs of this article, the +writer is indebted to a documentation compiled from authentic German +sources by a Dane, the Reverend J. P. Bang, D. D., professor of theology +at the University of Copenhagen, a famous Lutheran institution, under +the title of _Hurrah and Hallelujah_--which, incidentally, was a title +borrowed from the published poetic works of this same Doctor Vorwerk. +Doctor Bang's symposium has lately been published in English by the +American publisher, Doran, with an introduction by "Ralph Connor," the +Canadian novelist, otherwise Major Charles W. Gordon, of the Canadian +Overseas Forces. + + + + +XV + + +Had Doctor Bang set forth as his own views, as a neutral, the amazing +utterances which make up the bulk of his compilation, no one here or +abroad would have believed that he described a true condition. But he +was smarter than that. He was mainly content to repeat literal +translations of indubitable prayers, poems, sermons, addresses--written +and spoken statements of contemporary German clergymen, German +professors and German statesmen. + +In further support of the point which I have been striving to make I +mean to take the liberty here of adding a few more extracts from the +first American edition of _Hurrah and Hallelujah_, in each instance +giving credit to the original German author of the same. + +For instance, the Reverend Doctor Vorwerk, who appears to specialise in +prayers, begins one invocation with this sentence, which is especially +interesting in that the good pastor couples the Cherubim, the Seraphim, +and--guess what?--the Zeppelins in the same breath: + + "Thou Who dwellest high above Cherubim, Seraphim and Zeppelins; + Thou Who art enthroned as a God of Thunder in the midst of + lightning from the clouds, and lightning from sword and cannon, + send thunder, lightning, hail and tempest hurtling upon our enemy; + bestow upon us his banners; hurl him down into the dark burial + pits!" + +Another poet, Franz Philippi by name, in a widely circulated work called +_World-Germany_, delivers himself in part as follows: + + "Formerly German thought was shut up in her corner; but now the + world shall have its coat cut according to German measure and, as + far as our swords flash and German blood flows, the circle of the + earth shall come under the tutelage of German activity." + +Herr J. Suze, a prose writer, says with the emphasis of profound +conviction: + + "The Germans are first before the Throne of God--Thou couldst not + place the golden crown of victory in purer hands." + +On November 13, 1914, according to Doctor Bang, a German theological +professor preached an address which the _Berliner Lokal Anzeiger_ +reproduced, with favourable editorial comment. Here is a typical +paragraph from this sermon: + + "The deepest and most thought-inspiring result of the war is 'the + German God.' Not the national God such as the lower nations + worship, but 'Our God,' Who is not ashamed of belonging to us, the + peculiar acquirement of our heart." + +The Reverend H. Francke is a pastor in the city of Liegnitz. From his +pulpit he delivered a series of so-called war sermons, which afterward, +at the request of the members of his flock, were printed in a book, the +cover of which was ornamented with the Iron Cross. And we find the +Reverend Francke adding his voice to the chorus thus: + + "Germany is precisely--who would venture to deny it?--the + representative of the highest morality, of the purest humanity, of + the most chastened Christianity." + +The Reverend Walter Lehmann, pastor at the town of Hamberge, in +Holstein, went a trifle further. When he got out his book of war sermons +he published it under the title _About the German God_; and therein, +among other things, he said: + + "This means that we go forth to war as Christians, precisely as + Christians, as we Germans understand Christianity; it means that we + have God on our side.... Can the Russians, the French, the + Serbians, the English, say this? No; not one of them. Only we + Germans can say it.... If God is for us who can be against us? It + is enough for us to be a part of God.... A + nation"--Germany--"which is God's seed corn for the future.... + Germany is the centre of God's plans for the world.... That + glorious feat of arms forty-four years ago"--the Battle of + Sedan--"gives us courage to believe that the German soul is the + world's soul; that God and Germany belong to one another." + +These are the concluding words of the Reverend Lehmann's book _About the +German God_: + + "Oh, that the German God may permeate the world! Oh, that the + eternal victory may blossom before the God of the German soul!" + +It will not do to slight the Herr Pastor Job Rump, lic., Doctor, of +Berlin. Hearken a moment to a word or two from one of Doctor Rump's +published pamphlets: + + "A corrupt world, fettered in monstrous sin, shall, by the will of + God, be healed by the German nature.... Ye"--the Germans--"are the + chosen generation, the royal priesthood, the holy nation, the + peculiar people." + +A learned and no doubt a pious professor, Herr G. Roethe, is credited +with this modest claim: + + "While other nations are born, ripen and grow old, the Germans + alone possess the gift of rejuvenescence." + +And so on and so forth, for two hundred and thirty-four pages of _Hurrah +and Hallelujah_. The run of the contents is quite up to sample. None of +us can object to these reverend gentlemen seeking to walk with God; what +we do object to is their undertaking to lead Him. + + + + +XVI + + +So far as I can tell, Doctor Bang has not overlooked a single bet. He +makes out a complete case; and, what is more, in so doing he relies +not upon his own conclusions, but upon the avowed utterances of +distinguished German savants, clergymen and versifiers. + +These, then, are the spoken thoughts of civilian leaders of our enemy. +If the leaders believe these things their followers must also believe +them; must believe, with the Reverend Lehmann and the Reverend Vorwerk, +that God is a German God, and should properly be so addressed by a +worshipper upon his knees, since one prayer begins "O German God!"; must +believe, with Von Bernhardi--who spoke of "the miserable life of all +small states"--that "to allow to the weak the same right of existence as +to the strong, vigorous nation means presumptuous encroachment upon the +natural laws of development"; and with Treitschke, that "the small +nations have no right to existence and ought to be swallowed up"; and +with Lasson, that "It is moral, inasmuch as it is reasonable, that the +small states, in spite of treaties, should become the prey of the +strongest"; and must believe that to Prussia was appointed the task of +curing the whole world, America included, of what--according to the +Prussian ideal--ails it. + +It is the nation which believes these things, and which has striven in +this war to practice what its teachers preached, that we now are called +upon to fight. If we remember this as we go along it will help us to +understand some of the things the enemy will seek to do unto us; and +should help him to understand some of the things we mean to do unto him. + +Indeed, there is hope of his being able some day to understand that we +entered this war not against a people or a nation so much as we entered +it against an idea, a disease, a form of paranoia, a form of rabies, a +form of mania which has turned men into blasphemous and murderous mad +dogs, running amuck and slavering in the highways of the world. + +What would any intelligent American do if a mad dog entered the street +where he lived, even though that dog, before it went mad, had been a +kind and docile creature? And what is he going to do in the existing +situation? + +The same answer does for both questions. Because there is only one +answer. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Speaking of Prussians, by Irvin S. Cobb + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41272 *** |