Sir Edward Grey and his Colleagues.
445. Abysmal hypocrisy ... the national vice has been incarnated for us in Sir Edward Grey.—Prof. G. Roethe, D.R.S.Z., No. i, p. 14.
446. When that English gentleman, Minister Grey, who has a cancerous tumour in place of a heart, in the end has to reap the infamy he deserves, he will promptly cast it from him as dirt with his horse-hoof.—Pastor Tolzien, in "Patriotic-Evangelical War Lectures," quoted in H.A.H., p. 141.
447. The Englishman treats the foreigner, when he does not need him, as thin air, when he does need him, as a piece of goods; consequently, when he sits in the Cabinet, he considers that, towards a foreign State, a lie is not a lie, deceit is not deceit, and a surprise attack in time of peace is a perfectly legitimate measure, so long as it serves England's interests.—Prof. W. Wundt, D.N.I.P., p. 131.
448. Sir Edward Grey possesses in a singular degree the gift of carrying on business with complete control of all emotion and elimination of all deep thought. Every third word of such person is the untranslatable, elusive, "I dare say."—O.A.H. Schmitz, D.W.D., p. 14.
449. The untruthfulness and unscrupulous brutality with which the English Cabinet carries on the war place it far below the level of Muscovite morality.—"Germanus."—B.U.D.K., p. 35.
450. The English diplomatist of the type of Sir Edward Grey holds honesty in political matters to be a blunder and a sin. Therefore he usually expresses himself in a form which is capable of several interpretations.—"Germanus," B.U.D.K., p. 18.
451. Sir Edward Grey has for years presided over all the peace conferences—only to ensure the coming of the projected war; he has for years sought a "better understanding" with Germany—only to prevent the honest German statesmen and diplomats from suspecting that a war of annihilation had been irrevocably decreed; the German Emperor, at the last moment, had almost averted the danger of war—Grey, the unctuous apostle of peace, contrived so to shuffle the cards as to render it inevitable.—H.S. Chamberlain, K.A., p. 66.
For "shuffling the cards" compare No. 371.
452. The President of the United States, Professor Wilson ... allows American munition works to supply our enemies with unlimited quantities of war material, favours the infamous design of England to starve out Germany, and rises in his "peace" speeches to a height of political and religious hypocrisy in no way inferior to that attained by the English "million-murderer" Grey.—Prof. E. Haeckel, E.W., p. 61.
Britain's Great Illusion.[43]
453. The English regard themselves as the Chosen People, towards which all others are predestined to stand in a relation of more or less complete dependence.—Prof. U. v. Wilamowitz-Möllendorf, R. pt. iv., p. 19.
454. Strange as it may appear to us, it is nevertheless unquestionable that all England has from of old been penetrated with the idea that her attainment of uncontested colonial and maritime power was not only to her interest but to that of the whole world, the dominion over which God had Himself assigned to her, and that therefore all means to this beneficent end were permissible and well-pleasing to God.—J. Riesser, E.U.W., p. 10.
455. Just because the English found their national feeling on the consciousness of their kultural successes, and the belief that they alone are God's chosen people on earth, every desire of other peoples to assert equality of rights appears to their self-conceit an offence against the will of God.—Prof. A. Schröer, Z.C.E., p. 31.
456. The belief in the Kultur-mission entrusted to it by God, in preference to all other peoples, has grown into the very flesh and blood of the English people.—Prof. F. Keutgen, B.R.K., p. 7.
457. The English hold that they are literally descended from the ten tribes [!]. But we Germans do not base our relation to Israel on any such fleshly foundation. The German people are the spiritual, the religious parallel of the people of Israel, they are "the true Israel begotten of the Spirit."—Dr. Preuss, quoted in H.A.H., p. 213.
458. Many of the best, most unselfish and most modest Englishmen pray to God in all good faith that He would at last open the eyes of the German people, and especially of the German Emperor, that they may see how wrong and even sinful it is to place any further hindrances in the way of the expansion of the Kingdom of God on earth by "His chosen people," that is to say, the English themselves.—Prof. A. Schröer, Z.C.E., p. 12.
459. The Briton regards himself as chosen by Providence, the elect of the Lord, entrusted with a special mission on this earth, and placed under the immediate protection of Heaven, with a first claim upon all the good things of the earth.—"Germanus," B.U.D.K., p. 11.
460. Our duty to ourselves, and to our English fellow-creatures—since we would fain be, not an imaginary "chosen people" but true children of God—is to give them such a thorough thrashing that they may once for all be cured of the fatal illusion that they have established a monopoly in the dear Lord God, and that the rest of humanity is destined only to serve as a stool for their clumsy feet!—Prof. A. Schröer, Z.C.E., p. 70.
461. Perhaps the reason that England's power now stands in so great peril is that, in her self-deceiving vanity, she thought that God had guaranteed her the dominion of the world.—Pastor M. Hennig, D.K.U.W., P. 86.
462. It is a matter of fact that the greater part of the English people cherish the pathological imagination that they alone are the true pioneers of Kultur and culture.—Prof. E. Haeckel, E.W., p. 115.
463. The English now assert the claim of their Kultur to be the only existing, and, indeed, the God-appointed summit of human development, which to attain would mean salvation for all humanity. This is a positively grotesque mixture of national pride and religiosity.—Prof. A. Schröer, Z.C.E., p. 12.
464. "England über alles" has in England a very solid meaning, as compared with our quite ideally conceived "Deutschland über alles." An immense self-assurance, partly reposing on the notion of being in a special sense God's chosen people, gives to these claims a certain inward foundation. In the consciousness of an alleged superiority of moral Kultur, the English aspire to rule the world.—Prof. R. Seeberg, D.R.S.Z., No. 15, p. 28.
465. Alone among Kultur-peoples, the English know only themselves, and regard all others, without exception, as foreign, inferior creatures, towards whom Nature decrees that the laws of morality, as between man and man, should not hold good, any more than they hold good towards animals and plants.[44]—Prof. A. Schröer, Z.C.E., p. 49.
466. There are, of course, many sincerely pious Christians in England. But either they are impotent as against the prevailing passion, or they are blinded by the illusion of the "chosen people," and have therefore lost all power of sober self-criticism.—Oberlehrer Hermann Schuster, D.K.K.