FOOTNOTES:
[1] "In this village, from which the Germans had just retreated, I saw a proclamation by the German officer, saying that every Frenchman who refused to work should receive twenty blows of the whip; the women, fifteen blows, and the boys and girls under fifteen years of age, ten blows."—Extract from letter of the American violinist, Albert Spalding, now a lieutenant serving in France.
[2] During last September and October, at the author's suggestion, the American etcher—Louis Orr—for eighteen days was in Rheims Cathedral while under bombardment. Mr. Orr is one of the most distinguished etchers now living. He has sent to Dr. Hillis 2,400 copies of his three etchings to be sold for the Red Cross work under official direction.
II
The Pan-German Empire Scheme, For Which Germany Lost Her Soul
"Our motto is 'from Hamburg to the Persian gulf.'"—Professor Tannemann.
"In this Pan-German Empire, Germans alone will govern; they alone will exercise political rights; they alone will serve in the army and navy; they alone will have the right to hold land; and they will thus be made to feel that they are a people of rulers, as they were in the Middle Ages. They will, however, allow inferior tasks to be carried out by the foreign subjects under their domination."—"Gross Deutschland und Mitteleuropa um das Jahr 1950," p. 48.
"Why should we make paltry excuses? Yes, we brought on this war, and we are glad of it. We provoked it, because we were sure of winning."
Maximilian Hardin,
In Zukunft, Aug. 20, 1914.
"After this war is over, I will stand no nonsense from the United States."—The Kaiser's threat to Ambassador Gerard.
II
The Pan-German Empire Scheme, For Which Germany Lost Her Soul
German apostasy began with German military success. What the Kaiser offered to Germany in exchange for her soul was the Pan-German empire. The originator of the world empire scheme was the Kaiser; Nietzsche was its philosopher; Treitsche its historian; Bernhardi its advocate; and von Hindenburg its executive. The first conference regarding the Pan-German empire seems to have been called in 1895, and was held in the Potsdam Palace. During the next two or three years, a world organization was brought together by the "Potsdam gang," with the Kaiser at the center, an inner circle of officers, and politicians, a larger circle of bankers, manufacturers, and ship owners. Finally there was a far-flung web of diplomats, spies, commercial travellers, Pan-German League agents, organizing in New York, Chicago and San Francisco, in Buenos Ayres and Rio de Janeiro, in Buda Pesth and Vienna, in Constantinople and Cairo, German Veteran Leagues, German Commercial Associations, all looking towards the day when the Kaiser would be the world emperor, and all countries would become provinces paying tribute to the world capital, Berlin. "What about international law?" asked an American diplomat of Bernhardi. "There will be no international law," was the answer. "Berlin will decide what laws are best for the rest of the world."
The Pan-German empire pamphlets, maps, books, magazine articles, published during the next ten years, were legion, but Professor Tannemann, a personal friend of the Kaiser, in 1911 restated the Kaiser's scheme. The essence of Pan-German plan was condensed into a few sentences: "From Hamburg and the North Sea to the Persian Gulf; the immediate goal, by 1915, the conquest of 250,000,000 of people; the ultimate goal, the Germanization of all the nations of the world." One of the Kaiser's speeches contains the explanation of his dream of becoming a world conqueror: "From my childhood I have been under the influence of five men,—Alexander, Julius Cæsar, Theodoric II, Frederick the Great and Napoleon. Each of these men dreamed a dream of a world empire; they failed. I am dreaming a dream of a German world empire—and my mailed fist shall succeed." The Kaiser printed a map headed, "The Roman Empire; Cæsar Augustus, world emperor." That map shows the once great states, Athens, Ephesus, Jerusalem, Alexandria, Carthage, reduced to county seat towns, paying tribute to the world capital, while their captive kings had walked as slaves in the triumphal processions along the Appian Way, towards the palace of the world ruler, Cæsar Augustus. One of the Pan-German empire pamphlets, and many of the German newspapers contain a revised map of Europe, showing "Germania" stamped across the continent, with St. Petersburg, Paris and London become county seat towns, paying tribute to the world capital, Berlin. Many German newspapers, during this war, have published maps showing Canada as a German province, with the name "Germania" stamped across South America, Mexico and Central America. These many pamphlets and Pan-German empire books explain Admiral Dewey's report to President McKinley. That report seems to have been written in the cabin of the flag-ship Olympia, in Manila Bay. Dewey states that the German admiral told him plainly to make a note of this prophecy that within fifteen years (1899, report of Admiral Dewey), Germany would crush France and Belgium, seize Holland and Denmark, utterly destroy England, and take Canada as a German province. Admiral Dewey added that the German admiral told him that while the Kaiser intended to seize New York and Washington and hold them for an indemnity, he did not intend to permanently hold in subjection the United States, but he did intend to retain Mexico and South America, and then "dispose of the Monroe Doctrine as he thinks best." This may explain the Kaiser's word to Mr. Gerard: "After this war I will stand no nonsense from the United States." So astounding were these claims that the statesmen and rulers of the world laughed at these threats, deeming it incredible that Germany was plotting a world war. Two or three men of remarkable prescience and vision, General Roberts in London, Chéradame in Paris, and Ex-President Roosevelt, understood and therefore never ceased warning the nation to prepare and make ready for a conflict that seemed to them inevitable.
When the Kaiser first announced his Pan-German empire scheme he bribed his people by appeals to avarice, ambition, and jealousy of England and Russia. The arguments used by the Potsdam gang were very simple: Agriculture pays six per cent., trade eight per cent., finance ten per cent., shipping twelve per cent., but war is an industry that pays fifty per cent. dividend upon the investment. Germany's war upon little Denmark, a people without army or navy, paid an enormous dividend upon the investment, in that it gave Germany one of her richest provinces, made possible the Kiel Canal, and left Denmark permanently crippled and exposed. "Denmark and Holland, also, are apples," says a German author, "that are slowly ripening, and we will pick the fruit at the proper time." Germany's war of 1864 upon Austria was the attack of a brigand upon a traveller rich with gold, and the cities and provinces that Germany wrested away from the ruler of Vienna paid a hundred per cent. upon the investment. In his Memoirs Bismarck tells the world plainly that he deliberately fomented a war with France, that he might seize the iron ore provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, in order to obtain the hematite iron that would make it possible for Germany to pass from the agricultural people into an industrial and manufacturing state as the competitor of England for the world's trade. For more than forty years the chief argument presented in the Reichstag for increased appropriations for the army and the navy was the money dividends paid by war.
In 1911 the Kaiser spread out before his people bribes most alluring. Just as the Devil led Jesus up into a mountain and showed Him the whole earth, so the Kaiser and the Potsdam gang led the Germans into a mount of temptation and showed them how easy it was to make the Kaiser a world emperor. The argument was very simple; after twenty-five years of preparation, Germany has nine million soldiers, has cannons, liquid fire, poisoned gases, battle-ships, aeroplanes, with every wagon and automobile ready to have the pleasure body removed, and a military body substituted. "We are ready to the last buckle on the horses' harness." To the east was Russia, broken by war with Japan; Russia with her gold mines, her wheat granaries, her vast coal and iron deposits and forests all undeveloped. To the southeast was Rumania, with her oil wells, with Constantinople and the silk fields, and the Tigris, the gateway to the Indian Ocean, and the treasures of the Bagdad railway country. To the west was unarmed Belgium, rich with twenty billions of treasure; France, half armed, with her newly discovered iron mines and coal measures; England, one vast jewel box, a kind of Aladdin's cave,—"Wait until Germany lifts her mailed fists upon the English treasure box, there will be enough for everybody in Berlin," is the gist of Zimmermann's speech of November, 1914. "The people of the United States call us Huns," writes the editor of the Localanzeiger, "but New York had better remember that the young Huns from the German forests took only two weeks to cross the Alps and loot the city of Rome." Other German members of the Reichstag have likened the United States unto a Crœsus, the richest man in the world, living in a golden house, surrounded with bags, bursting with gems and wedges of gold and silver, but a Crœsus that had no lock on his door and no weapon in his hand.
The Treasure Boxes of Europe
"Belgium is a lamb, France and England are flocks of sheep, feeding and fattening in the pasture, ready for our shears." All these statements were sent out through Germany. The other nations are so many treasure boxes, ready for our military key to unlock them. Boys, farmers' sons, discussed the coming looting expedition in the hayfields. College boys talked about the treasures of England and France, Belgium and Holland, as boys once talked about emptying the newly discovered gold mines of California. Officers drank to "The Day." Editors added fuel to the flames of avarice. The statesmen cried, "It is our duty to rule these countries, and besides, by war we get great gain."
The influence of these incitements to avarice and ambition is found in the letters taken from the dead bodies of German soldiers. In one letter, found near Vitrimont, the German lover tells his sweetheart that he expects soon to be in Paris, and will bring her a handful of diamond rings, and a pocket full of bracelets and a few Paris gowns. Another German boy writes his young wife about a little valley in France with rich pastures and meadows, and beautiful farmhouses, and how Heinrich, Hans and Diedrich had decided to pick out the four best farms on which they would live as soon as they had cleaned up Paris. He adds, however, that Hans thinks it would be much better for them to wait until England is smashed, and when Canada is a colony, they can pick farms there two or three miles square, and make their children great landowners. For this war was to pay Germany a thousand per cent. dividend on her investment.
And who, even already, can deny that in large part Germany has made good the bribes offered to German boys? When one thinks how Germany has looted the states of Europe of her gold and silver, her bonds and stocks, their pictures, books, furniture, laces, silks, wheat, corn, wine, it is easy to understand the Kaiser's statement that "war should be Germany's chief national industry." With the Kaiser crime has prospered.
Germany wanted this war, planned this war, prepared for this war, and made treasure houses in which she could store the loot of this war. Blood went to Germany's head like drugged wine. For years she has been beside herself with military success. The Kaiser for twenty years has been rattling his sword and bullying the nations. Standing in the market-place, like some huge Goliath, in the spirit of the common braggart he has shouted, "I can lick anybody in the world." In the nature of the case, one brigand with his revolver is equal to a hundred business men and manufacturers in a railroad car. In the nature of the case also, Germany, with her military preparedness, should have been equal to a score of countries like Belgium and France and Great Britain and the United States—industrious, hard-working, but unmilitary, peacefully disposed. The deadly virus of avarice and militarism has burned like a fever in Germany's soul, even as avarice burned in the soul of Judas Iscariot, and made him a traitor that crucified not Belgium, but Jesus upon the cross.
The German People and the Kaiser
Little by little under the influence of this Pan-German empire scheme, the German people began to go to pieces morally. The breakdown of character is slow. The most virulent disease needs time to destroy the tissues, and poison the blood. The first to go over to the Potsdam gang were the officers and the army. Next followed the university professors, the bankers and the landowners. Last of all came the manufacturers and the shippers, who for a long time were timid lest their foreign trade be injured. Finally the state clergy, who received their salary from the Kaiser's treasury, were whipped into line, and men like Eucken, Harnack, heard the crack of the slave-driver's scourge above their heads, and became abject servants.
At last the woven web was spread all over the world through spies. Could any man have been lifted up above Berlin, and had full power to survey the whole world, he would have seen a spider's web, with its center in Berlin, with the Kaiser as the big black spider, sending out along the sinuous threads into every capital of every country and of every continent his evil plans and plots. Men like von Bernstorff in Washington, and Münsterberg in Boston, von Bopp, recently convicted in San Francisco, Luxburg in Buenos Ayres, with their schemes to blow up munition factories, planting of bombshells in ships, dynamiting Parliament buildings, blowing up bridges, organizing sedition in Mexico, India, and Brazil, the millions and millions of dollars spent in our own country, the secret decorations of medals given to bankers, manufacturers, shippers, editors, newspaper boys, stenographers, make up a story of Machiavellian deviltry and subtle cunning that has no parallel. The only difference between Judas and the average German spy is that the modern spy in the United States would not only have betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver, but would have given ten per cent. off for cash. All that Germany won in three hundred years through the teachings of Martin Luther has been lost in twenty-five years through the influence of the Kaiser and his militarists. In the presence of all the world we have seen Germany lose her soul. All that John Milton taught, as to the fall of Satan as an angel, becoming a devil, has been literally enacted on the stage before the nations of the earth. What in 1900 was efficiency, in 1914 became the science of lying, theft, rape, poison and assassination.
Germany Constructs a Philosophy to Justify Herself
Having entered upon war as her chief national industry, and looking with greedy eyes upon the steel plants, the looms and factories of rich Belgium; envying France her unique supremacy as the leader of the fine arts; tempted by the little states like Holland and Denmark on the west and Rumania and Poland on the east, states that seemed like purple clusters, bursting with wine for German lips, it became necessary for Germany to find a philosophy that would break down the great convictions of morality inherited from Martin Luther.
All wise men trace deeds back to the thinking of the doer, just as they trace bitter water back to a poisoned spring. Of the German teaching of Prussianism we can only say, no grapes from Prussian thorns, no figs from Prussian thistles. What the Prussians thought in their hearts, that they became in their lives. What began as sparks of avarice and ambition has ended in this world conflagration, and Germany is responsible, not for the sparks, but for the world ruin. Alcibiades and Catiline and Benedict Arnold all thought in terms of selfishness, and they all did cruel deeds. The murder of Edith Cavell and Captain Fryatt, the sinking of women and children on steamers, the rape of Belgium and Northern France, the assassination of Poland, the deliberate, cold-blooded plots by the German officers with the Turkish soldiers to exterminate the Armenians, so that they could settle on the lands, are the outer exhibition in deeds of the inner philosophy of the Germans. That is why their favorite philosopher Nietzsche says that Germany's gift is brute force and not intellect. ("Ecce Homo," page 38, and page 134: "Wherever Germany extends her sway, she ruins culture. I feel it my duty to tell the Germans that every crime against culture lies on their conscience.")
A philosophy therefore was concocted, called "Prussianism." This philosophy is no secret, for Germany has trumpeted it forth, from the top of the palace in Potsdam and the Dom in Berlin. For fifteen years it has been the very essence of the teaching in her universities, her pulpit, her press and her Parliament. This is its substance: Over against Martin Luther's conception of God as the All-wise and Good Father, who is righteous Himself, and demands righteousness of His children, the new philosophy sets up the political State as the be-all and end-all for the German people. Omnipotence means a Kaiser's arm, with that of a war staff, carried up to the nth degree of power by seventy millions of other arms.
"Weakness is the only sin against the Holy Ghost," cries Bernhardi. Let the individual German soldier be strong enough to trample under foot the Belgian or French merchant or girl. Let the German navy be strong enough to sink every Lusitania or Sussex. Let the German army be equal to overrunning, looting, pillaging and dynamiting France and Belgium. To be beaten is to be contemptible, and therefore to be sinful. Whatever wins the victory on land or sea is right. The moment Germany crosses the frontiers all Belgians and Frenchmen lose any right whatever to either their lives or their property, but from that moment the invader's life and effects become sacred.
The Reflex Influence of the Pan-German Scheme Upon Germany's Statesmen
Most disastrous and disorganizing the reflex influence of Germany's philosophy of Prussianism, and her plot for a Pan-German empire upon Germany's statesmen and diplomats. From Phocion to Lincoln high-minded statesmen have been jealous of their pledges and of their treaties with other countries. In one of his noblest orations Edmund Burke speaks of "the peculiar sanctity attaching to an international treaty." Our own Washington spoke about the importance of consideration and long deliberation before an ambassador gave his word that, once it is given, must stand "like the law of God." Business men scoff at the trickster, who plays fast and loose with his written word given to the bank or to his creditors. Nor is there a tribe of Indians that, once they have eaten salt, or exchanged the pipe of peace, but considers the pledge precious as life itself. All civilized nations, therefore, have been horrified at the way Germany has broken down on the side of truthfulness, until it is a proverb in the world to-day that a thing is as worthless as a written pledge by Germany.
The Scrap of Paper
Our scholars have long known that Frederick the Great was the first German to say that international treaties were to be observed so long as they were useful and served his purpose, and when that time passed a treaty was to be counted "a scrap of paper." When then the English Ambassador, on July 1, 1914, told Bethmann-Hollweg plainly that if Germany invaded Belgium, England would have no other course than to join her armies to those of Belgium and France, the German Prime Minister exclaimed, "And declare war for what? For just a scrap of paper!" We now know that Germany signed treaties for purposes of diplomatic camouflage, to blind the eyes of other governments while she was making ready her weapons for attack. Most significant that speech in the Reichstag on July 31, 1914, that contains this: "We cannot longer postpone the fulfillment of the pledge given to Austria at the conference of July 5th." During all those days, between July 30th and August 4th, when the Kaiser was apparently trying to prevent war, Germany and Austria were secretly preparing cannon, guns, ammunition, railway trains, food, and secretly hurrying them to the front, during three entire weeks, following the agreement between the Kaiser and the Emperor. Upon eternal brass, therefore, Germany engraved her own infamy. "We are now in a state of necessity, and necessity knows no law. We were compelled to override the just protest of the Belgian government. The wrong—I speak openly—that we are committing, we will endeavour to make good as soon as our military goal has been reached. Anybody who is threatened as we are threatened can have only one thought, how he is to hack his way through,—how he is to hack his way through."
Consul to Norway
That is why our President, speaking for the republic, has told Germany plainly that no treaty signed by the Emperor and his government means anything whatsoever. There is no German in the Fatherland or in the United States but understands thoroughly that the word of a German statesman is less than nothing: the shadow of the shade of the possibility of a cipher. Here is von Bernstorff, given his papers and sent back to Berlin. Bernstorff gives out a final interview, stating that he has the full approval of his conscience (a favourite expression of German spies), in that he was carrying away from the United States the full consciousness that he had never done one deed or had one thought save to draw the Fatherland and the great republic closer together, though all the time his secret agents had been journeying back and forth between Washington and Mexico, carrying bribes, organizing sedition, maturing plots, looking towards war between Mexico and Texas, and pledging Carranza that Germany would restore to her New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada. Scarcely less horrible Luxburg's cipher despatch advising Germany to sink the steamers of the Argentine Republic, "leaving no trace behind." In Norway the German Ambassador from Berlin used his trunk, covered with the red sealing wax of the Foreign Office, to carry bombs, and the cultures of glanders and anthrax to spread disease among the Norwegian people and to sink their steamers. In the old days of Cæsar Borgia in Italy, poisoning was made a fine art. Whenever the Italian prince coveted a rich man's palace, diamond ring, beautiful wife or young daughter, or his villa, he invited the owner to dine at the palace, having first of all poisoned the wine or the meat. Now the world has wakened up to discover that the Borgias were children in the arts of dissimulation and hypocrisy, and that Germany is the original inventor of perjury. The Kaiser, Bethmann-Hollweg, von Bernstorff, and some pro-Germans in this country have displayed a form of wickedness so cool, calculated, and scientific, as to seem the characteristics of fiends, while their plots to plant bombshells on our steamers, and kill innocent people by the hundreds represent such hardened forms of fiendishness that even the worst thief would scarcely dare hint at such crimes to his own accomplice in devilishness.
Germany's Policy Towards the United States
Not less striking the influence of Germany's philosophy and her Pan-German empire scheme upon her diplomats in foreign countries. We need not take the opinion of the British or Belgian, the French or American authors. It is enough to ask for the testimony of the Germans themselves. One of the most important documents bearing upon this war is a volume of reminiscences published seven years before the war began, but practically unknown in the United States. This volume is entitled "Experiences at a German Embassy; ten years of German-American diplomacy," by Emil Witte, late counsellor of litigation; Leipzig, 1907. Probably not more than two or three thousand of the author's friends ever bought a copy of this book, but the volume spreads out before us like a black map the fact that for ten years von Holleben and Münsterberg with their German associates were steadily building up the organization of all German Americans preparatory to a time when the war between the United States and Germany would partake the character of a Civil War.
This counsellor of litigation tells us that on the German day, October 6, 1901, Germanism in the United States was organized at Philadelphia. The diplomat then tells us how, directed by the German Ambassador, he went up and down the United States organizing in New York, Brooklyn, Chicago, Milwaukee, Cincinnati and St. Louis the German Soldiers' Societies of the United States, and wooing the German-Americans over to the point where they would see that their first allegiance was to the Fatherland, their second to the United States. The German foreign office and the Kaiser were constantly sending von Holleben for German-Americans flags, decorations, gracious letters, medals, invitations to visit Germany and meet the Royalty—methods that culminated in the German law that made it possible for pro-Germans in this country and for their sons despite American citizenship to keep their German citizenship with all the rights of suffrage in the Fatherland. Very significant also one sentence in these reminiscences of this German diplomat: "The relations between Official Germany and the emigrant subjects of the Emperor, whether they have become citizens of the Republic or not, may lead to serious complications between Germany and the United States, and to unforeseen incidents which at any moment may involve both powers in serious difficulty."
No scholar longer doubts that the German government fully expected that when war was declared some six or eight thousand German-Americans belonging to the German Societies in the United States would bring about something akin to Civil War. This is not to be wondered at in view of the fact that for years Germany's official representatives had been receiving from time to time honours and addresses from the Kaiser and sending back to Berlin cablegrams pledging undying faithfulness and loyalty, and affirming their purpose to enthrone German culture in the United States. This diplomat quotes in full the address of the German Ambassador in behalf of the Kaiser on presenting the German colours to the German Military Society of Chicago.
"Greetings from the German Emperor! That is the cry with which I come before you. His Majesty, my most gracious master, has ordered me to hand to you to-day the colour which has been desired by you so strongly and for so long. The colour is a token of his Majesty's approval with which the Kaiser remembers in love and friendship those who have served in the German Army and Navy, and those who have fought and bled for the Fatherland. This colour is to be the symbol of German faithfulness, German manliness and German military honour. His Majesty asks you to accept this colour as a token of that unity which should prevail among all German soldiers, to act also abroad [Think of that "abroad," in Chicago!] in accordance with the sentiments of German loyalty and German sense of duty, and to take for your maxim the word of that great German, Bismarck: We Germans fear God, but nothing else in the world. Now let the colour flutter in the wind. In this moment of enthusiasm let us all sound the cry that is now on the lips of every old German soldier; his Majesty, the German Emperor, William II, hurrah, hurrah, hurrah!"
The history of no country contains plot so astounding! Under cover of hospitality the German guest was planting bombshells in the home of his host. With infinite cunning, the German diplomats built a German kingdom within our kingdom. How thoroughly they alienated many German-Americans is proven to-day by this fact, that many members of the German Societies in the United States, the moment any American comes out against Germany, break with the banker, drop the newspaper, give up the pew in the church, for while their lips announce that they are Americans, in their heart they feel that their first loyalty is to the Kaiser, and not to our government.
German Diplomats in the Western Cities
These "Reminiscences" also acquaint Americans with many other plans to organize the German-Americans in the United States preparatory to the day when Canada and the United States should become German colonies. Silly as all this seems to Americans it was very serious to von Holleben, von Bopp, the recently convicted German consul, Münsterberg, Boy-Ed, von Papen and Bernstorff. In discussing the certainty of war with England, the author states that Germany is absolutely ready for such an event as war in America, since this is necessary. He quotes von Schleinitz as answering: "I know all this and I know more. I have spoken with officers in high positions in Berlin, and I have heard surprising things. Germany reckons very strongly upon the support of Germans living in the western states. We looked at one another. We Knew."
Little did the people of the United States realize that in 1907, buried in the German language, there was being sold in Germany a volume of reminiscences by a counsellor of legation at the German Embassy in Washington, containing these sentences: "Professor Münsterberg had created a widely spread organization of espionage in the United States. Münsterberg had been sent to America by direct command of the Emperor, in order to mislead the public of the United States with regard to Germany's true policy towards America. He receives five thousand dollars from Harvard and five thousand dollars from the Berlin foreign office." Then follows high praise for Münsterberg in view of the fact that he was sent to the United States as a lecturer, as a camouflage device to conceal the real fact that he was the new head of the German spy system in America. Beyond all doubt he was almost the only one that succeeded in making his camouflage work of lecturing so successful as to overshadow the more important fact that he was the organizer of the most efficient system of espionage that the Kaiser has ever had.[3]
German Philosophy of Militarism Has Debauched Germany's University Professors
Consider how strangely the Pan-German scheme has degraded Germany's university professors. The glory of every great city and land is its scholars, with their love of truth, and their stainless lives. We have had our civilization at the hands of men who loved the truth supremely, pursued the truth eternally, and cherished the truth above their fear of hell or hope of heaven. The world has its liberty, its science and its law at the hands of the heroes who preferred the truth above life. Concerning the patriots, the reformers and the statesmen, we can only say they were stoned, they were sawn asunder, they were crucified in Jerusalem, poisoned in Athens, tortured in Ephesus, exiled in Florence, burned at the stake in Oxford, assassinated in London. But the iron autocracy and militarism of Germany made cowards of her university men. An address has been issued to the civilized world, signed by ninety-odd German professors. They receive their salaries from State endowments. Any hour the Kaiser or the Chancellor can cut off their income. When the indignation of the civilized world flamed out against Germany because of the rape of Belgium, the German Government asked these professors to sign a document, and so degraded were these men through the German philosophy of militarism and autocracy, that they obeyed—losing their souls to save their salary. And consider what they signed!
Moral Cowardice of Scholars
By royal command these ninety-three professors signed a statement saying: "It is not true that we wronged Belgium." In the Kaiser's address that he himself published, we read, "Give no quarter, take no prisoners"; he adds, "Let all who fall into your hands be at your mercy; make yourself as terrible as the Huns." This address was circulated on millions of letter cards all over Germany. Realizing the mistake made by the Kaiser these professors signed a statement saying: "It is not true that our soldiers ever injured the life of a single Belgian." Socrates, Savonarola or Lincoln would have died a thousand deaths upon the rack, rather than have consented to sign their names to a lie, but the Kaiser and the Chancellor had only to command their servants to lie, and they lied like slaves. It makes the university professor ashamed of the German teachers. Think of Harnack and Eucken, with their moral cowardice and their intellectual subserviency. Plainly that is what Nietzsche meant when he said (page 134, "Ecce Homo"), "Every crime against culture that has been committed for a hundred years rests upon Germany."
Germany Organizes a Plan to Exterminate Conscience
When her Kaiser and Germany's War Staff had determined to do evil, to become world conquerors, and prepared a philosophy that would justify the crimes necessary to win the goal, Germany then began to get rid of any vestige of conscience that survived from the faith of Martin Luther. It was not enough to control the philosophers and scholars, it became necessary to popularize the new license to lawlessness, lust and theft. Unfortunately, Germany was complicated by her treaties with other nations as to the conduct of war. These treaties were a thousand times more sacred than contracts of the merchant for a note at his bank. Germany had solemnly covenanted to attack only armies, and to safeguard and protect hospitals, schools, churches, with the life and property of non-combatants. The Christian religion, also, as presented by the German Luther, taught obligations involved in the Ten Commandments. The new system of militarism, therefore, could enter the mind of the German soldier only when the old ideas of the Ten Commandments, duty, God, and the obligations to the weak, as taught by Jesus, had been cast out. One of the crimes proscribed by civilized states is the crime of teaching other men to do wickedness. But the German Kaiser and War Staff have so far lost their souls that they have deliberately written a text-book teaching men murder as a science.
Finally Germany Enthroned Cruelty Instead of Christ's Law of Pity
Having substituted the Prussian theory of the State for Christianity, having replaced the eternal God with the word Force, spelt with a capital "F," having gotten the Devil all mixed up with God, until the Kaiser planned Devil deeds and signed God's name to them, finally Germany decided to slay humanitarianism, pity, sympathy, and regard for the poor and weak. Nineteen centuries ago Jesus taught men that God by His dear Son had identified Himself with the poor and the weak. Taking a little child, Jesus said, "Take heed that ye offend not one of my little ones." Christianity is kindness, and pity. Out of Christ's teachings came the world's hospitals, the emancipation of slaves, homes for the aged and the invalid, schools for orphans, hospitals for the sick. Jesus' sympathy has journeyed like an angel of God across the fields of the world, and God's sweet mercy has fallen like rain from His heaven to cool men's fevered souls. Just in proportion as men have gone towards God, they have gone towards pity and compassion. Florence Nightingale and Augusta Stanley enter the smitten hospitals of the Crimea; Mother Bickerdyke and all her associates are found on the battle-fields of our Civil War; John Howard organizes the Prison Relief movement. Everywhere society climbs upward upon the golden rounds of sympathy, and philanthropy.
But Germany despises kindness. She now bombs hospitals, sinks passenger ships, and the malignancy of her cruelties has horrified savages in the South Sea Islands. Over against the teachings of Jesus therefore put the German frightfulness. Read the article by that American physician, who left Germany last summer by way of Switzerland. Note that when a train of English soldiers passed through the town, a train loaded with prisoners packed in freight cars, without sanitation, wounded men who had been without food or drink for three days, men who, with black lips, begged the German women for water, that these women held water just out of reach of these English soldiers, and then spilling it on the ground, spat in the faces of these wounded men!
When Germans were marching into a Belgian village, a German captain ordered the villagers to go into the church. The houses were then searched. Unfortunately no weapons were found, and therefore there was no excuse for looting the town and then burning the buildings. The diary of a German soldier says that his captain showed him a window opening into the cellar of a Belgian house, and told him to put a gun in through the window. A few minutes later the captain "discovered" the gun, and taking the weapon into the church told all the villagers that concealed weapons had been found, and they must all be shot and the village destroyed. The German burglar's life was sacred, but the honest householder's life and that of his family were as nothing, losing all rights because the German burglar has broken open the door.
This new philosophy of militarism teaches that crimes become virtues if they promote the interests of the Fatherland. To accept the hospitality, to plot arson, bombing and sedition; to play false to all the higher considerations of honour, through the treachery of Bernstorff, von Papen, Boy-Ed, is beautiful and glorious for a German. The blackest deeds become sacred because they promote German interests. So thoroughly has this philosophy of loyalty to the Fatherland permeated the German soul in every part of the world, that—despite multitudes of large-hearted, open-minded American citizens who came hither from German homes to better their political and industrial conditions, and who, Germans as they are, gratefully appreciate and are loyal to the America that has welcomed them—there are also thousands of German-Americans about us from whose lips you cannot obtain one word of criticism of the blackest deeds of murder and arson and treachery by Germany's agents in this country, or of Germany abroad. Whatever is done for the Fatherland is right, no matter what crime is involved.
It is precisely to this type that Jesus addressed His words about the light in men that had become darkness, and therefore "how great is that darkness." By this route Germans have gone downward towards spiritual apostasy.
Germany's Wolfish Spirit
Germany's inspiration seems to be that of the treacherous wolf. Intellectually we cannot understand how a shepherd can watch wolves tearing the throat of the lamb in the Belgian sheepfold and the French sheepfold, while he stands by and waits until the wolf tears some lambs and sheep in the American sheepfold. When a brave man has seen a wolf tear the throat of one lamb he ought to leap from his place of safety and take his place beside the lamb. Of course, the wolf has many explanations to offer, but the explanations of the wolf do not interest some men. There are some foul diseases, like slavery, that have to be cut out by the surgery of war. Militarism and autocracy are cancers, and God has anointed the surgeon with ointment, black and sulphurous. But the surgeon's knife has to be heated red hot, that it may cauterize the wounds, lest the patient bleed and die.
"We must choose," said Bernhardi, "between Napoleon and Jesus."
The people of the United States have chosen between Militarism and Jesus. Our fathers chose eighteen centuries ago. They left the law of the pack behind. They chose to become the sons of God, and lose their lives that Christ's little ones might survive. Hospitals, reforms, schoolhouses for children, reform acts, emancipation proclamations, the Declaration of Independence, justice, and man's redemption are the results. German militarism is the apotheosis of the law of the wolf-pack, return to the club and the caveman. If she succeeds in a return to brute force, her victory will be the most terrible calamity that overwhelmed the earth since that event that Milton describes in his story of the rebellion in heaven. Every editor and school-teacher, every priest and minister, every patriot and parent, should drill into the minds of children and youth the Kaiser's original charge and the meaning thereof: "No quarter will be given, no prisoners will be taken. Let all who fall into your hands be at your mercy. Make yourselves more frightful than the Huns under Attila." Strange, therefore, the Germans feel so terribly because men call them Huns! Who understood their real nature? The Kaiser. Who branded them on the forehead with a red-hot iron, "Huns"? Their Kaiser. Whose bloody fingers were lifted upon their heads when his mildewed lips christened them "Hun"? Their Kaiser. Who likened the German soldiers to bloodhounds held upon the leash as they strained forward to tear women and children in Belgium and France? Their Kaiser. But Jesus said, Woe unto him that offends against one of My little ones! And out of the whirlwind comes the voice of an outraged God, saying to the invaders, "Here stay thy bloody waves! Thus far, and no farther!"