The State of Mind of German Intellectuals
But let us leave the military writers, and speak of men whose peaceful profession ought to have the effect of inspiring in them feelings of moderation. The classes whom we call the intellectuals have been the most savage of all.
“We are barbarians!” wrote the famous German journalist, Maximilian Harden, in his paper Die Zukunft, at the beginning of the war. “England is in alliance with yellow apes and rejoices to hear it said that Germans have been murdered by drunken Cossacks. The English, the Belgians, the French, the northern and southern Sklavs and the Japanese cannot praise one another enough, declaring that they are the guardians and purveyors of the most refined civilisation, and calling us barbarians.
“We should be quite wrong to contradict them. For ancient Rome when it was sick unto death, the Germans who dug its grave were barbarians. Your civilisation, friends, wafts to you no fine perfumes! Accustom yourselves to the idea that on German soil live barbarians and warriors who for the moment have no time to talk soft nothings. They shall defeat your armies, overpower your general staffs, and cut your tentacles in the oceans. When Tangiers and Toulon, Antwerp and Calais are subject to barbaric power, then sometime we shall have a kindly chat with you.”
It is in this state of mind, the mark of unbridled violence, that the German people embarked on the war of 1914. A monstrous outburst followed, the desire and the firm expectation of victory, of which German patriotism had perhaps the right to be glad. But at the same time the most brutal and savage instincts of mankind were let loose.
The will to ravage, destroy, pollute everything belonging to the enemy filled the German armies, and the results of teachings printed in books could be seen written in letters of blood and fire on the page of history. The theory of blind violence openly professed in Germany for half a century, a theory which has been drilled into the very soul of the nation, and has become a principle of conduct for the individual, has borne its fruit. We shall tell the story of them.