The Great Misunderstood.

(After July, 1914.)

61. It has been said that it is un-German to wish to be only German. That again is a consequence of our spiritual wealth. We understand all foreign nations; none of them understands us, and none of them can understand us.—Prof. W. Sombart, H.U.H., p. 135.

62. The historian and economist Sombart has said: "We understand all foreign nations, no foreign nation understands or can understand us." In these words he rejects all community of Kultur with other peoples, and especially the so-called "Western European Ideas."—O.A.H. Schmitz, D.W.D., p. 124.

63. In the world of the spirit, the victory of German thought seemed already almost decided. For it was able to comprehend the others, but they could not comprehend it.—G. Misch, V.G.D.K., p. 19.

64. We are still the most wide-hearted and receptive of people, a people that cannot live if it does not make its own the spiritual values of the other peoples. We can already say that we know the outer world better than they know us.—Prof. F. Meinecke, D.D.E., p. 35.

65. Whole-hearted understanding for another people can be fully attained only by treason to one's own nature, to one's own national personality. That is what makes the renegade so hateful, and those unpatriotic half-men, the intellectuals and æsthetes.—Prof. M. v. Gruber, D.R.S.Z., No. 30, p. 14.

66. The German is docile and eager to learn. His interest embraces everything, and most of all what is foreign. He is disposed to admire everything foreign and to underrate what is his own. With foreigners it is just the other way. We Germans know about them, but they know absolutely nothing about us.—Prof. A. Lasson, D.R.S.Z., No. 4, p. 34.

67. Apart from what Professor Larsen has said in Denmark, and Dr. Gino Bertolini in Italy, about German militarism ... we may designate as nonsense everything that foreigners, in low or in high estate, have recently said on this subject. This is a new proof of the fact that foreigners cannot understand us, apart from a few outstanding personalities whom a kind fate has borne aloft to the heights of the German spirit.—Prof. W. Sombart, H.U.H., p. 82.