From the Revue des Deux Mondes.
I sincerely thank M. Emile Boutroux for the letter he has been good enough to write to me; and the readers of the Revue will join me, for it is addressed to them also. No one could speak of Germany more authoritatively than M. Boutroux; no one, indeed, is better acquainted with the Germany of yesterday and that of today, or better equipped to draw a comparison between them, which for the Prussianized Germany of the present is a verdict and a condemnation. The violence, brutality, barbarism which she displays—a frightful spectacle—doubtless spring from the deepest instincts of race; but man always feels the need of justifying his conduct, and the Germans are too much philosophers not to seek justification for theirs in a scientific system in which these doctrinaires of a new sort are encouraged to persevere without the least scruple or pity. M. Boutroux explains to us the detestable sophism which has perverted the entire German soul and made of a nation which our grandfathers loved and admired, a monster whose implacable egotism weighs heavily on the world. But let M. Boutroux speak.
FRANCIS CHARMES.
PARIS, 28 September, 1914.
To the Director of the Revue des Deux Mondes:
Mr. Director and Dear Colleague: You have done me the honor to ask me, as I have lived in Germany and studied in part German philosophy and literature, whether I was not prepared to submit some observations touching the present war. I confess that at this moment words, and even thoughts, seem to me to amount to little. Like every Frenchman, I am given up wholly to the task of the hour; all my interest is in our generous and admirable army, and my sole concern is to take part, however modestly, in the work of the nation. True, a thousand memories and reflections crowd my mind; the notion of pausing to express them in writing had not occurred to me, but it would be ungracious in me to decline your kind invitation. Please omit from the ideas I throw on paper whatever seems to you to be lacking in interest.
Mephistopheles Appears.
In the presence of such events as are passing before our eyes, how can we keep our minds free? We have to say to ourselves: "See what has come of that philosophic, artistic, scientific development whose grandeur and idealistic character all the world has proclaimed!" "That is what the infernal cur had in his belly," said Faust as he saw the dog which was playing at his side change into Mephistopheles. What! Having declared the morality of Plato and Aristotle inadequate and mediocre, having preached duty for duty's sake, having established the unconditioned supremacy of moral worth, the royalty of the intellect, to end by officially declaring that a signed engagement is but a scrap of paper, and that juridic or moral laws do not count if they incommode us and if we are the strongest! Having given to the world marvelous music, in which the purest and deepest aspirations seem to be heard; having raised art and poetry to a sort of religion, in which man communes with the Eternal by the worship of the ideal; having exalted the universities as the most sublime of human creations, temples of science and of intellectual freedom, to come to bombarding Louvain, Malines, and the Cathedral of Rheims! Having assumed the role of representative par excellence of culture, of civilization in its loftiest form, at the end to aim at the subjugation of the world and to strive toward that aim by the methodical letting loose of brute force, wickedness, and barbarism! To boast of having attained the highest plane of human nature, and to reveal themselves as survivors of the Huns and Vandals!
Only yesterday Germany was feared throughout the world because of her power, but esteemed for her science and her heritage of idealism. Today, on the contrary, there is a common cry of reprobation and horror raised against her from one end of the earth to the other. Fear is overcome by indignation. On every side it is asserted that the victory of German imperialism and militarism would be the triumph of despotism, brutality, and barbarism. These ideas are expressed to us by Americans of the North and South, by Spaniards, Italians, Greeks, Swiss, and Rumanians. The nation which burned the University of Louvain and the Cathedral of Rheims has brought dishonor upon itself.
What shall we think of the prodigious contrast which manifests itself between the high culture of Germany and the end at which she aims, the means which she employs in the present war? Is it enough to explain this contrast, to allege that in spite of all their science the Germans are but slightly civilized, that in the sixteenth century they were still boorish and uncultivated and that their science, an affair of specialists and pundits, has never penetrated their soul or influenced their character?
This explanation is justified. Consider the German professor in the beer garden, in the relations of everyday life, in his amusements. With certain notable exceptions he excels only in discovering and collecting materials for study and in drawing from them, by mechanical operations, solutions that rest wholly upon text and argument and make no appeal whatever to ordinary judgment and good sense. What a disproportion often between his science and his real education. What vulgarity of tastes and sentiments and language. What brutality of methods on the part of this man whose authority is indisputable in his specialty. Take this learned man from his university chair, place him on that scene of war where force can alone reign and where the gross appetites are unchained, it is not surprising that his conduct approaches that of savages.
A Culture of Violence.
That is the current judgment and not without reason. The savant and the man, among the Germans, are only too often strangers to each other. The German in war is inhuman not merely because of an explosion of his true nature, gross and violent, but by order. His brutality is calculated and systematized. It justifies the words of La Harpe, "There is such a thing as a scientific barbarity." In 1900 the German Emperor haranguing his soldiers about to set sail for China, exhorted them to leave nothing living in their path and to bear themselves like Huns.
If, then, in this war, in the manner in which they have prepared and provoked it and now conduct it, they violate without scruple the laws of the civilized world, it is not despite their superior culture, it is in consequence of that very culture. They are barbarous because they are more civilized. How can such a combination of contradictory elements, such a synthesis, be possible?
Fichte in the famous discourses to the German Nation which he delivered at the University of Berlin during the Winter of 1807 and 1808, had one object: to arouse the German Nation by kindling its self-consciousness, that is to say, its pure Germanic essence, Deutschheit, in order to realize that essence when possible beyond its borders and to make it dominate the world. The general idea which must guide Germany in the accomplishment of this double task is: Germany is to all the rest of the world as good is to evil.
The appeal of Fichte was heard. During the century which followed, Germany in the most precise and practical manner, on the one hand built up the theory of Germanism or Deutschtum, on the other hand prepared the domination of Germanism in the world. This notion of Germanism furnishes, if I am not mistaken, the principle of the inference which I wish to indicate, the explanation of the surprising solidarity which Germans have created between culture and barbarism.
It would be interesting to probe this notion and follow its development.
In the first place how can a people come to claim for its ideas, its virtue, its achievements, not only the right to exist and to be respected by other people, but the privilege of being the sole expression of the true and the good while everything which emanates from other peoples represents nothing but error and evil?
The philosopher Fichte after having built up his system under the influence of Kant and of French ideas, notably under the influence of Rousseau—of whom he said "peace to his ashes, for he has done things"—could think of nothing better to reinforce the German soul after Jena than to persuade it that in itself and itself alone there was to be found the sense of the ideal combined with power to realize that ideal in the world.
The Power to Realize.
Starting from a certain notion of the absolute he found after Jena that this very notion constituted the foundation of the German genius. Soon this mystic method was merged in a more concrete method better adapted to the positive spirit of modern generations. The one science where all knowledge and ideas which concern human life are concentrated is history. To this science our epoch has devoted a veritable worship. Now the Germans have drawn from history two lessons of the highest importance. One is that history is not only the succession of events, which mark the life of humanity, it is the judgment of God upon the rivalries of peoples. Everything which is wishes to be, and to endure, struggle, and impose itself. History tells us which are the men and the things Providence has elected. The sign of that election is success. To subsist, grow, conquer, dominate is to prove that one is the confidant of the thought of Providence, the dispenser of the power of Providence. If one people appears designated by history to dominate the others then that people is the vicegerent of God upon earth, is God Himself, visible and tangible for His creatures.
The second lesson which German erudition has drawn from the study of history is that the actual existence of a people charged with representing God is not a myth, that such a people exists and that the German people is that people. From the victory of Hermann (Arminius) over Varus in the forest of Teutoburg in the year 9 A.D., the will of God is evident. The Middle Ages show it, and if in modern times Germany has appeared to efface herself it is because she was reposing to collect her force and strike more heavily. When she was not obviously the first, she was so virtually. It was in 1844 that Hoffmann von Fallersleben composed the national song, Deutschland über alles, über alles in der Welt. Germany over all, Germany over all the world, Germany extending from the Meuse to the Niemen, from the Adige to the Belt.
Not only is Germany the elect of Providence but the sole elect, and other nations are rejected. The sign of her election is the annihilation of the three legions of Quinctilius Varus, and her eternal task is to revenge herself for the insolence of the Roman General. "We shall give battle to Hermann and we shall avenge ourselves, "und wollen Rache haben." Thus ran the celebrated national song. Der Gott, der Eisen wachsen liess.
Germanism and God.
German civilization has developed in antagonism with the Greco-Roman civilization. To adopt the former was on the part of God to reject the latter. Therefore German consciousness, realized without hindrance in all its force, is but the Divine consciousness. Deutschtum = God and God = Deutschtum. In practice it is enough that an idea is authentically German in order that we may and must conclude that it is true, that it is just, and that it ought to prevail.
What are the essential dogmas of this truth, which is German because it is true and which is true because it is German? German metaphysicians explain that to us more clearly than is usual by thought. The first quality of this truth is that it is in opposition to what classic or Greco-Latin thought would recognize as true. The latter has sought to discover what in man is essentially human, to render man superior to other beings, and to substitute more and more the superior elements for the inferior elements in human life—reason for blind impulse, justice for force, good for wickedness. It has undertaken to create in the world a moral force capable of controlling and humanizing material forces. To this doctrine, which rests upon man as its centre and which was essentially human, German thought opposes itself as the infinite opposes the finite, the absolute the relative, the whole the part. The disciples of the Greeks had at their disposition no light except that of human reason; the German genius possesses a transcendent reason which pierces the mysteries of the absolute, of the Divine. What would light be without the shadow from which it is detached? How could the ego exist if there was not somewhere a non ego to which it is opposed? Evil is not less indispensable than good in the transcendent symphony of the whole.
There is something more. It may be a satisfaction for a Greco-Latin, impelled by his mediocre logic to say that good is good, evil is evil, but these simple formulas are contrary to the truth per se. Good by itself is absolutely impotent to realize itself. It is only an idea, an abstraction. The power and faculty of creation belong to evil alone. So that if good is to be realized it can only be by means of evil, and by means of evil left entirely to itself. God could not exist if He were not created by the devil, and thus, in a sense, evil is good and good is bad. Evil is good because it creates. Good is bad because it is impotent. The supreme and true divine law is just this: That evil left to itself, evil as evil, gives birth to good, which, by itself, would never be able to advance from the ideal to the real. "I am," said Mephistopheles, "part of that force which always wishes evil and always creates the good." Such is the divine order. He who undertakes to do good by good will only do evil. It is only in unchaining the power of evil that one has a chance to realize any good.
From these metaphysical principles questions raised by the idea of civilization receive most remarkable solutions.
The Essence of Civilization.
What is civilization in the German and true sense of the word?
Nations in general, especially the Latin nations, put the essence of civilization in the moral element of human life, in the softening of human manners. To those who understand human culture in this way the Germans will apply the words of Ibsen's Brand, "You wish to do great things but you lack energy. You expect success from mildness and goodness." According to the German thought, mildness and goodness are only weakness and impotence. Force alone is strong and force par excellence is science, which puts at our disposal the powers of nature and indefinitely multiplies our strength. Science, then, should be the principal object of our efforts. From science and from the culture of scientific intelligence there will necessarily result, by the effect of Divine grace, the progress of the will and of the conscience which is called moral progress. It is in this sense that Bismarck said, "Imagination and sentiment are to science and intelligence what the tares are to the wheat. The tares threaten to stifle the wheat; that is why they are cut down and burned." True civilization is a virile education, aiming at force and implying force. A civilization which under pretext of humanity and of courtesy enervates and softens man is fit only for women and for slaves.
Is that to say that the notion of right which men invoke against force has in reality no meaning, and that a highly civilized people would disregard it? We must clearly understand the relation which exists between the notion of right and the notion of force. Force is not the right. All existing forces do not have an equal right to exist; mediocre forces in reality have but a feeble share in the Divine force; but in proportion as a force becomes greater it is more noble. A universally victorious and all-powerful force would be identical with Divine force and should, therefore, be obeyed and honored in the same degree. Justice and force, moreover, belong to two different worlds—the natural and the spiritual. The former is the phenomenon and symbol of the latter. We live in a world of symbols; and so preponderant force is for us the visible and practical equivalent of right.
It is, then, puerile to admit the existence of a natural right inherent in individuals or in nations, and manifested in their aspirations, their powers, their sympathies, their wills. The right of peoples should be determined by a purely objective method.
Now in this sense people should be divided into Naturvölker, Halbkulturvölker, and Kulturvölker—people in the state of nature, half-cultivated people, and cultivated people. This is not all. There are people who are simply cultivated—Naturvölker—and people who are wholly cultivated—Vollkulturvölker. Now the degree of right depends on the degree of culture. As compared with the Kulturvölker the Naturvölker have no rights. They have only duties—submission, docility, obedience. And if there exists a people which deserves more than all others the title of Vollkulturvölker—completely cultured people—to this people the earth belongs and the supremacy thereof. Its mission is to bend all other peoples beneath the yoke of its omnipotence co-ordinated with its supreme culture.
The Master Nation.
Such is the idea of the master nation. This nation must not be simply an abstract type, it must necessarily be able to realize itself in our world. In effect the spirit is the supreme form of being; it necessarily wishes to be; and as it is infinite, it can be realized only by means of an infinite force. A nation capable of imposing its will upon everybody is the necessary instrument of the Divine will which can grant the prayer: "Our Father, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is done in heaven."
As a master nation is necessary in the world there must be subordinate nations. There can be no efficient "yes" without a decided "no." The ego, says Fichte, is effort. Therefore it presupposes something that resists it, namely, that which we call matter. The master nation commands. Therefore nations must exist who are made to obey it. It is needful even that these nations, which are to the master nation what the non ego is to the ego, should resist the action of this superior nation. For this resistance is necessary to enable the latter to develop and employ its force and to become fully itself; that is, to become the whole, enriching itself by the spoils of its enemies.
The ideal nation is thus defined by a transcendental deduction, and this same deduction leads us to affirm that the master nation must be not merely an idea but a reality. Now, it is plain that this realization of the ideal nation is going on under our eyes in the German Nation, which represents the highest created race and which surpasses all other nations in science and in power. It is to her, and to her alone, that the task of accomplishing the will of God upon earth is consigned.
Means of Success.
To succeed in it, what means must she employ?
In the first place she must acquire complete consciousness of her superiority and of her own genius. Nothing German is found in the same degree of excellence in other nations. German women, German fidelity, German wine, the German song, hold the first rank in the world. To combat Satan, that is to say, enemies of Germany, the Germans have at their service the ancient god, the German god, der alte, der deutsche Gott, who identifies His cause with theirs. And as everything which is German is by that very fact unique and inimitable, so it is correspondingly true that everything which the world has of excellence belongs to Germany in fact and in right. Rembrandt, Shakespeare, Ibsen, are Germans. A German brain alone could understand them and has a right to admire them. It is doubtful if even Joan of Arc, that sublime heroine, is French. German savants have maintained her German nationality. If the people of Alsace and Lorraine are faithful to France that only proves that they ought to be German subjects, because fidelity is a German virtue.
As Germany possesses, in principle, all the virtues, all the perfections, she suffices to herself and can learn nothing from other people. By still stronger reason she owes them no duty of respect or good-will. What is called humanity has no meaning for the German. The mot of William II., "Humanity for me stops at the Vosges," is not merely an instance of national egoism. The German Emperor feels that what is for the present beyond his empire can only acquire value when it shall be annexed to it.
How, then, ought Germany to behave to other nations?
There are people who wish to be loved, who believe that among nations as between individuals, courtesy may have a place and that it would be an advance for humanity to admit that justice and equity may rule international relations. But Germany, as regards other nations, makes no account of justice. She has nothing but scorn for that feminine sentiment which particularly characterizes the Latin races. The sentiment of justice and humanity is weakness and Germany is and ought to be force. Wo Preussens Macht in Frage kommt, kenne ich kein Gesetz, said Bismarck—"When the power of Prussia is in question I know no law."
Enemies Most Welcome.
The German does not ask to be loved. He prefers to be hated provided he is feared. Oderint, dum metuant. He does not mind being surrounded by enemies. He knows with satisfaction that in the very heart of the empire certain annexed provinces constantly protest against the violence which has been done to them. The ego cannot work without opposition. The German needs enemies to keep himself in that state of tension and of struggle which is the condition of vigor. He willingly applies to himself what the Lord God said of man in general in the prologue of Goethe's "Faust":
Man's activity has only too great a propensity to relax. Left by himself man seeks repose. That is why I give him a devil for a companion. He will excite him and keep him from getting sleepy.
Germany has a certain satisfaction in recognizing in the neighbors whom she menaces, in the subjects whom she oppresses, these providential devils whose mischief will stimulate her activity and her virtue.
Not that Germany rejects, as regards other nations, every régime except that of hostility. Her aim is domination, the only rôle which suits the people of God. Now, to attain that, two means are offered to her. The first plainly is intimidation which must never flag. The feeble quickly become insolent if their feebleness is not recalled to them. Other nations must feel themselves constantly threatened with the worst catastrophes if they resist Germany. But it being well understood that Germany is the strongest, that she will never give up what she possesses, however unjustly, then bargains advantageous not only for herself but occasionally for the other party, may be the more direct and less onerous means than violence to attain her end. So Germany will be, by turns, or both at once, threatening and amiable. Amiability itself can be effective when it rests on hatred, contempt, and omnipotence.
Now power counts before all. Germany must possess armaments superior to those of all other nations. The reason is plain. The German Empire is a rock of peace, der Hort des Friedens. The force which it accumulates is directed toward imposing upon mankind the German peace, the divine peace. Since Germany represents peace, whoever opposes Germany intends war. Now it is legitimate that Germany should arm to the teeth because she is the incarnation of peace, but the adversaries of Germany, who, in opposing Germany oppose peace, cannot have the same right. It is the duty of Germany to carry her armaments to the maximum; other peoples have the right to arm only as Germany may permit.
Germany does not seek war. On the contrary, she tries by inspiring terror to render it impossible. But if some nation should profit or be capable of profiting by her love of peace to pretend to rights which offend her she will consent to punish that nation. She will be pained by the violence she has to do to that nation and the severity which she has to use toward the guilty. But soldier of God as she is, she cannot fail to her mission. Any nation which refuses to do the will of Germany proves by that very fact its cultural inferiority and becomes guilty. It must be chastised.
The method according to which Germany will make war is determined by these premises. War is a return to the state of nature. Germany yields to this temporary retrogression because she has to do with people of an inferior culture who must be taught a lesson, and must be spoken to in a language which they understand. Now a characteristic of a state of nature is that force reigns undisputed. In this very trait resides the sublime beauty of that state, its grandeur and its fecundity. Don't talk of that romantic chivalry which pretends in time of war to temper the violence of savage instincts by the intervention of feminine sensibility. War is war. Krieg ist Krieg. It isn't child's play, it isn't sport where it is necessary to blend barbarity and humanity so as to conciliate and humanize them. It is barbarity itself let loose as widely and fully as possible. This is not perversity. Man as man suffers in becoming barbarous, but the man who replaces God suppresses the feebleness of the creature. He submits himself to the mysterious and sublime law in virtue of which evil is by so much more beneficent as it is achieved with resolution and completeness. Pecca fortiter.
The Nature of War.
The first article of the code of war is then the suppression of all sensibility, pity, humanity. The nature of war is to kill and destroy. The more it destroys and kills the sooner it comes to its ideal form. Moreover, it is at bottom more humane the more inhuman it is, because the very terrors which its excesses inspire shorten it and make it less murderous.
In the second place, war necessarily ignores moral laws. Respect for laws, treaties, conventions, loyalty, good faith, sentiment and honor, scruples, nobility of soul generosity—these are mere fetters. The God-people do not recognize them. It will then, without hesitation, violate the rights of neutrals if it is to its interest. It will use falsehood, perfidy, treachery. It will justify itself by futile pretexts in committing the most atrocious acts—bombardment of undefended cities, massacre of old men, women and children; barbarous torture, pillage and assassination; bestiality to women; organized incendiarism; methodical destruction of monuments which, by their history and their antiquity and by the admiration of the world, would seem to be inviolable. "I am told: I must avenge myself." This reason suffices. We are told that some inhabitant of one city or another has been wanting in respect toward one of our men. Therefore we must burn the city and show the inhabitants what we have. Definitively, our duty is to let loose the elementary energies of nature as far as possible to attain the maximum force and the maximum of result.
The effect should, moreover, be psychological as well as material. Actions which seem horrible to man and which spread terror are commendable means, because they break the spirit even if they have no value from a military point of view. Moreover, what offends common morality is conformed to transcendent morality. The mission of the Germans at war is to punish. They work Divine vengeance. They compel their enemies to expiate the crime of resisting them. After they have taken a city, if the enemy has the insolence to take it back, it is just that they shall sack that city if possible, killing its inhabitants and burning its finest monuments.
Barbarity Multiplied by Science.
Given this problem, how to let loose most widely the powers of evil, it is clear that a people of superior culture is better equipped than any other to resolve that problem. In fact, science, where it excels, can work destruction and evil with the very forces which nature employs only to create light, heat, life, and beauty. The God-people therefore unites the maximum of science to the maximum of barbarity. The formula of its action may be thus written: "Barbarity multiplied by science."
This is the last word of the famous doctrine of Germanism. Now the identity of the ultimate consequences of the doctrine and the features which the present war presents is evident. The problem which we undertook is, therefore, solved. If, contrary to all likelihood, barbarity co-exists with culture in the Germans; if in the present war it appears to be absolutely bound up in that culture, the reason is that German culture differs profoundly from what humanity understands by culture and civilization. Human civilization tries to humanize war. German culture tends indefinitely to increase its primitive brutality by science.
In everything the Germans must be unique—in their women, their God, their wine, their loyalty. The war which the Germans wage against us strikes the world with horror and terror, because it is in the full force of the term "the German way, die deutsche Art, the German war."
As the world recognizes this astonishing proposition it asks with anxiety, what may be its future relations to Germany? Knowingly and systematically, Germany opposes to all Hellenic, Christian, humane civilizations the devastating theory of the Huns. True, after the war she will claim that she has done nothing but conform, often with pain, to the conditions of ideal and divine war, and she will appear willing to pardon to her enemies the cruelties she has had to inflict upon them. Decidedly, the world will refuse to admire this horrible magnanimity which on the first impulse of resistance becomes savagery. Today the veil is torn away. German culture is shown to be a scientific barbarity. The world, which means in the future to rid itself of all despotism, will not compromise with the despotism of barbarity.
But what a disappointment and what a grief! Formerly, Germany was held to be a great nation. Its praises were sounded in many a land of solid and high culture. The German tradition once held other doctrines than those we have now seen devolop under the hands of Prussia. Germanism, as the Prussians formulate it, consists essentially in contempt for all other nations and in the pretension of domination. But Leibnitz—as highly esteemed in the Latin world as in the German—professed a philosophy which valued unity only under the form of harmony between free and autonomous forces. Leibnitz exalted the multiple, the diverse, the spontaneous. Between rival powers he sought to establish relations which would reconcile them without changing or diminishing the value or independence of any of them. Witness his effort at the reunion of the Catholic and Protestant Churches. After Leibnitz came Kant. He certainly was very much of a German. He owned, nevertheless, that he had learned from Rousseau to honor the common man who, not being a savant, possesses moral value far above the savant, who has no merit but science. And, starting from the principle that every person, so far as he is capable of moral value, is entitled to respect, he urged men to create not a universal and despotic monarchy but a republic of nations in which each should possess a free and independent personality.
This willingness to put liberty before unity, and respect and honor the dignity of other nations while at the same time serving its own, was not extinguished in Germany with Leibnitz and Kant. Permit me, my dear Director, on this subject to indulge in some personal reminiscences.
Treitschke Versus Bluntschli.
In January, 1869, I was sent to Heidelberg by the Minister of Public Instruction, Victor Duruy, to study the organization of German universities. Germany was for me the land of metaphysics, music, and poetry. I was greatly astonished to find that outside of the lecture courses the only thing discussed was the war which Prussia was about to make on France. Invited to a soirée, I heard it whispered behind me, Vielleicht ist er ein französischer Spion—"Perhaps he is a French spy." Such were the words as I caught them. At the beer garden a student seated himself near me. He said to me, "We are going to war with you. We shall take Alsace and Lorraine." That night I could see from my window, looking out on the Neckar, the students clad in their club costumes floating down the river on an illuminated raft singing the famous song in honor of Blücher, who "taught the Welches the way of the Germans." And at the university itself the lectures of Treitschke, attended by excited crowds, were heated harangues against the French, inciting to hatred and to war. Seeing that nothing was thought of but the preparation for war, I came back at the Easter vacation of 1869 convinced that hostilities would ensue. I returned to Heidelberg some time later and became acquainted with other persons, other centres of ideas. I understood then that opinion in Germany was divided between two opposite doctrines. The general aspiration was for the unity of Germany, but there was no agreement as to the way of conceiving and realizing this unity. The thesis of Treitschke was, Freiheit durch Einheit, "liberty through unity," that is to say, unity first, unity before all; liberty later, when circumstances should permit. And to realize at once this unity, which really was the only thing that mattered, the enrollment of all Germany under the command of Prussia for a war against France.
Now the formula of Treitschke was opposed by that of Bluntschli, Einheit durch Freiheit—"Unity through liberty." This doctrine, which counted at that time some eminent advocates, aimed first to safeguard the independence and unity of the German States and then to establish between them on that basis a federated union. And as it contemplated in the heart of Germany a union without hegemony, so it conceived of German unity as something to be realized without harm to other nations, and especially without harm to France. It was to be a free Germany in a free world.
Germany at that epoch was at the parting of the ways. Should she follow a tendency still living in many and noble minds or should she abandon it entirely, to march head down in the ways in which Prussia had entangled her? That was the question. The party of war, the party of unity as a means of attacking and despoiling France, the Prussian party, gained the day. And its success rendered its preponderance definitive. Since then those who have undertaken to remain faithful to an ideal of liberty and humanity have been annihilated.
Is it still possible that Germany may some day regain the parting of the ways where she was before 1870 and this time take the other road, the road of the Leibnitzes, the Kants, the Bluntschlis, which leads first to the liberty of individuals and of peoples and afterward—- and only afterward—a form of harmony where the rights of all are equally respected? A word of the Scotch professor, William Knight, comes back to my memory at this moment: "The best things have to die and be reborn." The Germany which the world respected and admired, the Germany of Leibnitz, appears indeed dead. Can it be reborn?
Accept, I beg, my dear Director, the assurance of my cordial devotion.
EMILE BOUTROUX.
The German Religion of Duty
By Gabriele Reuter.[[2]]
On various occasions in the past I have been reproached by my friends for not showing the proper spirit of patriotism.
I have merely smiled at their criticism, for it was my opinion that true patriotism does not consist of flowery speeches and assertions, but in the effort dutifully to accomplish that for which one is best qualified.
It seemed to me that I was truly showing my love for the Fatherland by writing my books to the best of my ability.
But the source of this reproach was very evident to me. The cause could be traced to a quality which I share with many of my compatriots. It must, in truth, be called a particularly characteristic trait. This is a very earnest desire for and love of justice, which is not satisfied simply to "recognize," but endeavors thoroughly to understand the material and spiritual points of view of the other nations in order to show them the proper appreciation.
It is natural to develop affection for that which one earnestly desires to understand.
Many Germans have had the experience that they have rather overzealously commenced by weighing the good of a foreign people in the balance with the good of their own, and with well-nigh fanatic honesty they have ended by acknowledging their own shortcomings compared to the merits and advantages of the foreign nation. There have been instances when some foreigner has drawn our attention to this or that particular weakness and immediately innumerable of my countrymen assented, saying, "Certainly it is true, the criticism is just, matters are probably even worse than they have been represented."
Many of us, and I acknowledge I am one of the many, have developed a form of ascetic mania for self-abasement, a desire for truth which knows no limits in the dissection of its own condition and the disclosure of social and personal shortcomings and disadvantages. This tendency may be easily discerned in much of the German literature of the past twenty years; also, in my books.
The individual is really always the symbol of the whole, and the thoughts and feelings of one person are but the expression of strong forces in national life and culture. It was not want of patriotism, but an unbounded love for the universality of European culture which drove us, drove many thousand people with German souls, to reach out over the boundaries of our own Fatherland for intellectual conquests, for permeation and coalescence with all the world's riches, goodness, and beauty.
We loved the others; and believing ourselves among friends we were candid and disclosed our weaknesses.
Germans Trusted Too Well.
We permitted criticism and criticised ourselves, because we were convinced that those others had our welfare at heart, and also because we were convinced that only by unsparing self-knowledge can the heights be scaled which lead to superior and more refined development. It is therefore probable that we ourselves have delivered the weapons into our enemies' hands.
Confiding and harmless as children, we were blind to the enigmatical hatred which has to an appalling extent developed all around us. This hate which has been nourished systematically and with satanic cleverness probably originated in a slight feeling of jealousy, and the tendency of my countrymen to criticise each other led our enemies to believe that they might look for internal discord in the Fatherland and that our humiliation could therefore be more easily accomplished.
If we had recognized the danger in time, we might have prevented this hatred, to which they at the beginning were hardly prone, from taking root in the souls of nations. But only very few among us were aware of it and they received little credence from the others. There were times when each one of us sensed the antipathy which we encountered beyond the boundary lines of our own country. But we never realized how deeply it had taken root and how widely it had spread. We loved our enemies! We loved this French nation for its high development of etiquette, language, and taste; a culture which seemed well adapted to serve as a complement to our own. How much misery France might have been spared had she but understood this unfortunate love of the German people for the "Hereditary Enemy!"
We loved the deep, mystically religious soul of the Russians in their anguished struggles for freedom! How many Germans have looked upon Tolstoy as a new savior!
Above all, though, the German admired the Englishman, in the rôle of the "royal merchant," the far-seeing colonizer, the master of the seas. Without envy Germany gave England credit for all these qualities. And when during the Boer war voices were raised to warn against the English character, even then to most of us our Anglo-Saxon cousin remained the "Gentleman beyond reproach."
Then there is the great German love for Holland, Switzerland, and the Scandinavian countries; here we may find the Germanic race less adulterated than in our own country. Scandinavian poets have become our poets and we are as proud of the works of the Swedish artist as we are of those of our people.
We gaze with delight upon the proud, blonde grace of the Norse maid; the more gentle and pliant manners of the Swedes and Danes arouse our admiration; and we dearly love their beautiful fjords and forests of beech and birch.
Love Changed to Suspicion.
Many of us wonder today how much of all this love we, in the days to come, will be able to rescue from the debris. "Has the world gone mad that it has ceased to believe in our sincerity?" This at present is the cry of many, many thousand German men and women. Do we deserve to have our love requited with hate? And to find in the countries which declare themselves neutral, distrust, reserve, and, in fact, doubt of our honest intentions? Sad, dull despair has taken possession of the hearts of our best men and women. It is not because they tremble for the fate of the loved ones who have been compelled to go to the front and not because there is any fear as to the outcome of this war. Not one among us doubts the ultimate triumph of Germany. We also know that we must pay a terrible toll for this victory with the blood of our sons, fathers and husbands.
Equally as much as they mourn the loss of our young manhood many of our best citizens deplore the hatred which has spread over the face of the globe, hate which has torn asunder what was believed to have been a firmly woven net of a common European culture. That which we with ardent souls have labored to create is being devastated by ruthless force.
The following story of the non-commissioned German officer is typical or symbolical of many. He, while the bullets of the inhabitants of Louvain fell around him, rescued the priceless old paintings from the burning Church of St. Peter, simply because he was an art-historian and knew and loved each of the masterpieces. And well we all understand the feelings which mastered him during those moments of horror.
He would probably think and say, "I have but done my duty."
And now we have arrived at the point which gives rise to the greatest amount of antipathy. Our opponents declare we are endowed with great ability—they say they must acknowledge that. But how can a race of stiff, dry, duty-performing beings awaken love? The German must lose all claim to individual freedom and independence of thought in consequence of the training which he receives. When he is a child he commences it in a military subordination in the school, he continues it in the barracks, and later, when he enters a vocational life, under the stern leadership of his superiors. He becomes, our critics continue, simply a disagreeable pedantic tool of the all-powerful "drill." This atmosphere of "drill," or in other words this stern hard military spirit, envelops him, accompanies him as guardian from the cradle to the grave, and makes of him an unbearable companion for all the more refined, gentle, and amiable nations. Yes, our opponents often declare that they are waging war not only against Germany, but against this pedantic, military, tyrannical sense of duty, which they call the "Prussian spirit." It shall once and for all, they assert, be eradicated from the world.
A Religious Feeling of Duty.
Far be it from me to deny that my country people, male and female, do indeed possess an unusually strong sense of duty. This is combined with a desire for justice which is so often looked upon by outsiders as a lack of patriotic pride, and with an honesty which easily makes the German appear so clumsy and awkward. These three characteristics belong indissolubly together and one is not to be thought of without the other. The spirit from which the German sense of duty arises is what the foreigner so often misunderstands in us. He generally confuses sense of duty with blind obedience. But this sense of duty does not originate from a need for submission or from a mental dependence. No, it rests on a deep philosophical reason and arises from the mental recognition of ethical and national necessity. That is why it can exist side by side with the most extreme individualism, which also belongs to the peculiarities of the character of our people. The Germans have always been a nation of thinkers. Not only the scholar, also the simple worker, the laborer, the modest mother take a deep pleasure in forming their philosophy of life and the world. Side by side with the loud triumph of our industry goes this quieter existence, which has been rather pushed into the background in the last decades, but has not, therefore, ceased to exist. And the further the belief in miracles stepped into the background, the more the belief in duty acquired a warm religious tinge. The loud complaints about the vanishing of the sense of duty among the young, which has so often been voiced by public opinion, only prove how strongly this ethical force was governing people's minds. Every seeming diminution of it was felt to be a disastrous endangerment of the knowledge of the people. We have perhaps acted childishly and foolishly toward other nations by too great confidence. But in the consciousness of the entire German Nation the ominous feeling was living and working with mighty power, that only if every one of us devotes his entire strength to the post assigned to him, and works until the exhaustion of his last mental and physical power, only then can we as a national whole retain our high level and, surrounded by dangers on all sides, create sufficient room for ourselves to breathe and live.
The Military and the Socialists.
Two mighty organizations exist among us which were opposed to each other until recently—the military and the Social Democratic. The world sees with amazement the perfection which has been reached by the military organization of our army. Its achievements have only become possible through the above-mentioned philosophical conception of the sense of duty which raises it far above any systematic obedience and lets it appear in the light of religious ideal. Duty becomes in these serious and energetic minds a voluntary adaptation to a carefully organized whole with the knowledge that to serve this whole at the same time produces the highest achievement of the individual personality. The Social Democratic organization, opposed though it is to the military organization, is also composed of Germans and is, therefore, directed by the same basic principles as the military organization, although for entirely different purposes. For this one reason it was almost a matter of course that the Social Democrats offered their services for the war at the moment when they recognized that it had become of imperious necessity to set aside personal wishes and ideals and to put in the foreground only the duty of the defense of their country. The idea of our opponents, that they would find a support in the Socialists of our country, rested on a complete misunderstanding of the German character.
A foreign woman wrote to me in the days of the mobilization: "I do not understand the German enthusiasm for war—how it is possible that one can become enthusiastic about murder!" The woman only saw the exterior and superficial phase of things.
In its endeavor to unite itself with the world the German soul had suddenly come upon the wildest hatred * * * numerous high ideals of culture fell to ruin within a few hours. Deeply wounded, it was hurled back into its most personal possessions. Here it found itself face to face with tasks which far surpassed anything demanded heretofore of it as fulfillment of duty. And now there came to pass a wonder which will be unforgettable for every one who lived through this period. Everything dry, petty, pedantic, connected with German ways, which had often made many of us impatient with ourselves, was suddenly swept away by the storm of these days.
A gigantic wave of fiery hot feeling passed through our country flaming up like a beautiful sacrificial pyre. It was no longer a duty to offer one's self and one's life—it was supreme bliss. That might easily sound like a hollow phrase. But there is a proof, which is more genuine than words, than songs, and cheers. That is the expression in the faces of the people, their uncontrolled spontaneous movements. I saw the eyes light up of an old woman who had sent four sons into battle and exclaimed: "It is glorious to be allowed to give the Fatherland so much!" I saw the controlled calm in the features of sorrowing mothers who knew that their only sons had fallen. But the expression in the faces of many wounded who were already returning home gripped me the most. They had lived through the horror of the battle, their feet had waded through blood, their young bodies were horribly maimed. I saw this strangely serene, quietly friendly expression in the young faces. They were men who had sacrificed their ego. They were great patient conquerors of selfishness. And with what tenderness, what goodness are they surrounded, to lighten their lot, to give them joy. How the general sentiment is often expressed in the gesture of a single person—you did that for us—how can we sufficiently requite you?
A stream of love is flowing through our Fatherland and is uniting all hearts. The unobtrusive mother "duty" gave birth to the genial child "feeling." She bestowed on it her strong vitality so that it can defy a world of hatred—and conquer it.
Note:
[2] Gabriele Reuter is one of the foremost German woman authors.
A Letter to Gerhart Hauptmann
By Romain Rolland.
I am not, Gerhart Hauptmann, of those Frenchmen who call Germany barbarian. I recognize the intellectual and moral grandeur of your mighty race. I realize all that I owe to the thinkers of old Germany; and even at this extreme hour I recall to mind the example and the words of our Goethe—for he belongs to all humanity—repudiating national hatred and preserving his soul serene in those heights "where one feels the joys and sorrows of all peoples as one's own." It has been the labor of my life to bring together the minds of our two nations; and the atrocities of impious war shall never lead me to soil my heart with hatred.
Whatever reason I may have, therefore, to suffer through the deeds of your Germany and to judge as criminal the German policy and the German methods, I do not hold responsible the people who submit thereto and are reduced to mere blind instruments. This does not mean that I regard war as a fatality. A Frenchman knows no such word as fatality. Fatality is the excuse of souls that lack a will.
No. This war is the fruit of the feebleness of peoples and of their stupidity. One can only pity them; one cannot blame them. I do not reproach you for our sorrows. Your mourning will not be less than ours. If France is ruined, so also will be Germany. I did not even raise my voice when I saw your armies violate the neutrality of noble Belgium. This forfeit of honor, which compels the contempt of every right-thinking mind, is too well within the political tradition of Prussian Kings to have surprised me.
But the fury with which you treated that generous land whose one crime was to defend, unto despair, its independence and the idea of justice—that was too much! The world revolts in wrath at this. Reserve for us your violence—for us French, who are your enemies. But to trample upon your victims, upon the little Belgian people, unfortunate and innocent—that is ignominy!
And not content with assaulting the Belgium that lives, you wage war on the dead, on the glory of past centuries. You bombard Malines, you put Rubens to flame, Louvain comes from your hands a heap of ashes—Louvain with its treasures of art and knowledge, the holy city! Who indeed are you and what name do you conjure us to call you, Hauptmann, you who reject the title of barbarian?
Are you the children of Goethe or of Attila? Do you wage war against armies or against the human spirit? Kill men if you must, but respect man's work. For this is the heritage of the human race. And you, like us, are its trustees. In making pillage of it as you have done you prove yourselves unworthy of this great inheritance, unworthy of holding rank in the small European army which is the garde d'honneur of civilization.
It is not to the sense of the rest of the world that I appeal against you. It is to yourself, Hauptmann. In the name of our Europe, of which up to the present you have been one of the noblest champions—in the name of that civilization for which the greatest of men have struggled—in the name of the honor even of your German race, Gerhart Hauptmann, I adjure you, I command you, you and the intellectual élite of Germany, where I have so many friends, to protest with utmost vehemence against this crime which leaps back upon yourselves.
If you fail in this, one of two things will be proved—that you acquiesce, (and then the opinion of the world will crush you,) or that you are powerless to raise your voice against the Huns that now command you. And in that case, with what right will you still pretend, as you have written, that your cause is that of liberty and human progress?
You will be giving to the world a proof that, incapable of defending the liberty of the world, you are helpless even to uphold your own; that the élite of Germany lies subservient to the blackest despotism—to a tyranny which mutilates masterpieces and assassinates the human spirit.
I await your response, Hauptmann—a response which shall be an act. The opinion of Europe awaits it, as do I. Bear this in mind; in a moment like this, even silence is an act.
A Reply to Rolland
By Gerhart Hauptmann.
You address me, Herr Rolland, in public words which breathe the pain over this war, (forced by England, Russia and France,) pain over the endangering of European culture and the destruction of hallowed memorials of ancient art. I share in this general sorrow, but that to which I cannot consent is to give an answer whose spirit you have already prescribed and concerning which you wrongly assert that it is awaited by all Europe. I know that you are of German blood. Your beautiful novel, "Jean-Christophe," will remain immortal among us Germans together with "Wilhelm Meister," and "der grüne Heinrich."
But France became your adopted fatherland; therefore your heart must now be torn and your judgment confused. You have labored zealously for the reconciliation of both peoples. In spite of all this when the present bloody conflict destroys your fair concept of peace, as it has done for so many others, you see our nation and our people through French eyes, and every attempt to make you see clearly and as a German is absolutely sure to be in vain.
Naturally everything which you say of our Government, of our army and our people, is distorted, everything is false, so false that in this respect your open letter to me appears as an empty black surface.
War is war. You may lament war, but you should not wonder at the things that are inseparable from the elementary fact itself. Assuredly it is deplorable that in the conflict an irreplaceable Rubens is destroyed, but—with all honor to Rubens!—I am among those in whom the shattered breast of his fellow-man compels far deeper pain.
And, Herr Rolland, it is not exactly fitting that you should adopt a tone implying that the people of your land, the French, are coming out to meet us with palm branches, when in reality they are plentifully equipped with cannon, with cartridges, yes, even with dumdum bullets. It is apparent that you have grown pretty fearful of our brave troops! That is to the glory of a power which is invincible through the justice of its cause. The German soldier has nothing whatsoever in common with the loathsome and puerile were-wolf tales which your lying French press so zealously publishes abroad, that press which the French and the Belgian people have to thank for their misfortune.
Let the idle Englishmen call us Huns; you may, for all I care, characterize the warriors of our splendid Landwehr as sons of Attila; it is enough for us if this Landwehr can shatter into a thousand pieces the ring of our merciless enemies. Far better that you should call us sons of Attila, cross yourselves in fear and remain outside our borders, than that you should indict tender inscriptions upon the tomb of our German name, calling us the beloved descendants of Goethe. The epithet Huns is coined by people who, themselves Huns, are experiencing disappointment in their criminal attacks on the life of a sound and valorous race, because it knows the trick of parrying a fearful blow with still more fearful force. In their impotence, they take refuge in curses.
I say nothing against the Belgian people. The peaceful passage of German troops, a question of life for Germany, was refused by Belgium because the Government had made itself a tool of England and France. This same Government then organized an unparalleled guerrilla warfare in order to support a lost cause, and by that act—Herr Rolland, you are a musician!—struck the horrible keynote of conflict. If you are at all in a position to break your way through the giant's wall of anti-German lies, read the message to America, by our Imperial Chancellor, of Sept. 7; read further the telegram which on Sept. 8 the Kaiser himself addressed to President Wilson. You will then discover things which it is necessary to know in order to understand the calamity of Louvain.
Another Reply to Rolland
By Karl Wolfskehl.
To you, Rolland, belonging as a chosen one to the more important Frenchmen who can rise above their race, the German nature has often been revealed. To you, now, we shall make answer, offer frank testimony concerning the spirit of the time, concerning that fate, that very fate in which you, the Frenchman, do not believe. You do not believe in it; what to us is fate, mysterious necessity, to you is fatalité, an unavoidable Alp which threatens the individual in his individual freedom. This fatalité, we, too, do not believe in it, but we do believe in the forces which bring forth the eternal in human will, that these both are one, will and forces, one with necessity, with actuality, with creative, moral power, of which all great ideas are the children, the idea of freedom, the idea of the beautiful, the idea of tragic fidelity, and that these, reaching far above being and passing away, are nevertheless real, life entire, fact entire. All that which is as dear to you as to us, great works and great feelings, resignation and self-restraint, all that is necessity, is fate, that became will—all that a unity out of choice and compulsion. All that is for us eternal, not according to the measure of time, but according to the beginning and the power of its working forces, in so far as it is necessary.
Thus has it become fate, destiny, not fatalité, rather like that fate which in Beethoven's own words in the first movement of his "Eroica" "is the knocking at the gate."
Such a fate is this war. No one wanted it in our Germany, for it was forced upon us with terrible arbitrariness, contrary to all right. Do you not know of the net that has been spun around us and drawn tight for the last half of a generation, to choke us? Do you not know how often this most peaceful of peoples has drawn back, how often the strange powers in the East and in the West have with contemptuous snarls said, "Wilhelm will not make war"? That you ought to know, Rolland, for it is known to the whole world.
The War "Came from God."
But I will betray something to you that you cannot know, because you are a stranger; and this will probably show you where we see fate. I will betray to you the fact that there is still another Germany behind the exterior in which great politics and great finance meet with the literary champions of Europe. That Germany tells you in this heavy hour of Europe:
This undesired war that has been forced upon us is nevertheless a necessity; it had to come to pass for the sake of Germany and the world of European humanity, for the sake of the world. We did not want it, but it came from God. Our poet knew of it. He saw this war and its necessity and its virtues, and heralded it, long before an ugly suspicion of it flew through the year—before the leaves began to turn. The "Stern des Bundes" ["Star of the Federation">[ is this book of prophecy, this book of necessity and of triumph.
The present need and the present triumph are quite human and quite inexorable. They have a part in all that has taken place, and they are unprecedented and new. None of us—do you hear, Rolland?—none of us Germans today would hesitate to help destroy every monument of our holy German past, if necessity made it a matter of the last ditch, for that from which alone all monuments of all times draw their right of existence and their worth unless they are empty husks, skeletons, and framework; even so, we alone may ask what shall come to pass, not what shall cease. Which ruins are ravings, and which are the pains of childbirth, we do not presume to decide; but you, too, who are so pained by ruins, even as we are pained by them, you, too, do not know it.
Today it is a question of the life or death of the European soul. Do you not believe that this soul is more endangered at the hands of the hordes of stub-nosed Slavs than of the phalanx of those whom you, Rolland, call Huns? Your sense must give you the right to answer. Recall the terrible story of Russian incendiarism for the last hundred years, which has torn to pieces in ever-increasing lust for murder bodies and souls; recall the eternally perjured and law-defying regiment of grave diggers; and then blush that you have characterized as a heavy crime a manfully confessed act of self-defense on the part of the Germans, the temporary occupation of Belgium! Blush that you have forgotten the Russian Moloch now loosed upon us, drunk with the blood and tears of alien peoples as well as of its own children! That you have forgotten all that, in order to lament over buildings which we have been forced in self-defense—again in self-defense—to sacrifice! And blush for those of your people who have become accomplices of that Moloch! Those who are sinning against the Holy Ghost of Europe, in order to attempt belated vengeance against Germany! Do you know what the ancients, the very Greeks and Romans from whom you have drawn your blood and temperament, called that sin? Blood-guiltiness is the name of that horror. And do you know how it is atoned for? I shrink to ask further, yea, even to think further; for horror falls upon me, and I see the unspeakable.
Today, battling against you allies of the swarms of Muscovites, we Europeans are battling also for that France which you are threatening—you, not we!
German Intellectuals "All Afire."
Yes, Romain Rolland, try, Frenchman that you are, to look into the mysteries of the time. Ask yourself, marvel, how it comes to pass that we, the intellectuals among the Germans, take part without exception in this dreadful war; take part with body and soul. None of us ambitious, none of us a politician, not one of us who, till this war, busied himself about anything except his idea, the Palladium of his life! And now we are all afire, with all our hearts, with our whole people, all full of determination and prepared for the last. All our youth in the field, every man among us thrilled with faith in our God and this battle of our God, every man among us conscious of the sacred necessity that has driven us, every man among us consecrated for timely death! Are these incendiaries? Are these slaves, whom a despot points the way to the rolling dead? Every one knows it is our all that is at stake; it is a matter of the divine in humanity, a matter of our preservation and that of Europe.
And so we stand amid death and ruins under the star—one federation, one single union. This I have had to tell you, whether you will listen to it, whether Europe has ears to hear it, or not. From now on, may our deeds be our words!
Are We Barbarians?
By Gerhart Hauptmann.
The idea of cosmopolitanism has never taken deeper root anywhere than in Germany. Let any person reflect about our literary translations and then name a nation that has tried so honestly as we to do justice to the spirit and the feelings of other races, to understand their inmost soul in all good-will.
I must out with it: We had and have no hatred against France: we have idolized the fine arts, the sculpture and painting and the literature of that country. The worldwide appreciation of Rodin had its origin in Germany—we esteem Anatole France, Maupassant, Flaubert, Balzac, as if they were German authors. We have a deep affection for the people of South France. We find passionate admirers of Mistral in small German towns, in alleys, in attics. It was deeply to be regretted that Germany and France could not be friends politically. They ought to have been, because they were joint trustees of the intellectual treasures of the Continent, because they are two of the great cultivated nations of Europe. But fate has willed it otherwise.
In the year 1870 the German races fought for the union of the Germans and the German Empire. Owing to the success of this struggle Germany has enjoyed an era of peace for more than forty years. A time of budding, growing, becoming strong, flowering, and bearing fruit, without parallel in history. Out of a population, growing more and more numerous, an ever-increasing number of individuals have been formed. Individual energy and a general tendency to expand led to the great achievements of our industry, our commerce, and our trade. I do not think that any American, Englishman, Frenchman, or Italian when in a German family, in German towns, in German hotels, on German ships, in German concerts, in German theatres, at Baireuth, in German libraries, or in German museums, ever felt as if he were among "barbarians." We visited other countries and kept an open door for every stranger.
English Relations.
It is with pain and with bitterness that I speak the word England. I am one of those barbarians on whom the English University of Oxford conferred the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa. I have friends in England who stand with one foot on the intellectual soil of Germany. Haldane, formerly English Minister of War, and with him countless other Englishmen, made regular pilgrimages to the little barbarous town of Weimar, where the barbarians Goethe, Schiller, Herder, Wieland, and others, have created another world for humanity. We have a poet, whose plays, more than those of any other German poet, have become national property; his name is Shakespeare. This Shakespeare is, at the same time, the prince of English poets. The mother of our Emperor is an English woman, the wife of the King of England a German, and yet this nation, so closely related by blood and choice, has declared war against us. Why? Heaven only knows. This much, however, is certain, that the now beginning European concert, saturated with blood, as it is, has an English statesman for its impresario and its conductor. It is doubtful, however, whether the finale of this terrible music will find the same conductor at the stand. "My cousin, you did not mean well either with yourselves or with us when your tools threw the fire-brand into our dwellings!"
If heaven wills that we should issue regenerated from this terrible trial, we shall have the sacred duty of showing ourselves worthy of our regeneration. By the complete victory of German arms the independence of Europe would be secured. It would be necessary to make it clear to the different nations of Europe that this war must be the last between themselves. They must see at last that their sanguinary duels only bring a shameful advantage to the one who, without taking part in them, is their originator. Then they must devote themselves mutually to the work of civilization and peace, which will then make misunderstandings impossible.
In this direction much had already been done before the war began. The dfferent nations had already met in peaceful emulation and were to meet again at Berlin for the Olympian games. It is only necessary to recall the aeronautic races, the boat races, the horse races, and the beneficial international influence of the arts and sciences, and the great super-national Nobel Prizes. The barbarian Germany has, as is well known, led the way among the other nations with her great institutions for social reform. A victory would oblige us to go forward on this path and to make the blessings of such institutions general. Our victory would, furthermore, secure the future existence of the Teutonic race for the welfare of the world. During the last decade, for example, how fruitful has the Scandinavian literature been for the German, and vice versa, the German for the Scandinavian. How many Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes have lately, without feeling conscious of a drop of foreign blood, shaken hands with German brothers in Stockholm, Christiania, Copenhagen, Munich, Vienna, and Berlin. How much homely good-fellowship has grown up around the noble names of Ibsen, Björnsen, and Strindberg.
Faust and Rifles.
I hear that abroad an enormous number of lying tales are being fabricated to the detriment of our honor, our culture, and our strength. Well, those who create these idle tales should reflect that the momentous hour is not favorable for fiction. On three frontiers our own blood bears witness. I myself have sent out two of my sons. All our intrepid German soldiers know why they are going to war. There are no analphabets to be found among them; all the more, however, of those who, besides their rifle, have their Goethe's "Faust," their "Zarathustra," a work of Schopenhauer's, the Bible, or their Homer in their knapsacks. And even those who have no book in the knapsack know that they are fighting for a hearth at which every guest is welcome.
On the frontier stands our blood testimony; the Socialist side by side with the bourgeois, the peasant beside the man of learning, the Prince beside the workman; and they all fight for German freedom, for German domestic life, for German art, German science, German progress; they fight with the full, clear consciousness of a noble and rich national possession, for internal and external goods, all of which serve for the general progress and development of mankind.
To Americans From a German Friend
By Ludwig Fulda.
Like most of the champions of Germany in the literary field, Ludwig Fulda is a Doctor of Philosophy. He is also author of many famous poetical and prose works of fiction.
Many things have been revealed to us by this war that even the keenest-minded among us would have declared immediately before its outbreak to be impossibilities. Nothing, however, has been a greater and more painful surprise to Germans than the position taken by a great part of the American press. There is nothing that we would have suspected less than that within the one neutral nation with which we felt ourselves most closely connected, both by common interests and by common ideals, voices would be raised that in the hour of our greatest danger would deny us their sympathy, yes, even their comprehension of our course.
To me, personally—I cannot avoid saying it—this was a very bitter disappointment. A year has hardly passed since I was over there the second time as a guest and returned strengthened in my admiration for that great, upward striving community. In my book, "Amerikanische Eindrucke," ("American Impressions,") a new edition of which has just appeared in a considerably supplemented form, comprising the fruits of that trip, I have made every effort to place before my countrymen in the brightest light the advantages and superiorities of Americans, and especially to convince them that the so-called land of the dollar was not only economically but also mentally and spiritually striding upward irresistibly; that also in the longing and effort to obtain education and knowledge and in the valuation of all the higher things in life, it was not surpassed by any other country in the world. In the entire book there is not a page that is not filled with the confidence that for these very reasons America and Germany were called upon to march hand in hand at the head of cultured humanity. Is this belief now to be contradicted? Shall I as a German no longer be permitted to call myself a friend of America because over there they think the worst of us for the reason that we, attacked in dastardly wise by a world of foes, are struggling with unanimous determination for our existence?
Guillotining German Honor.
Of course I know very well that public opinion over there has largely been misled by our opponents and is continuously being misled. Did not the English at the very beginning of the war cut our cable, in order to be able to guillotine our honor without the least interference? For this reason I cannot blame the masses if they took for truth the absurd fables dished out to them, when no contradicting voice could reach them. Less than that, however, can I understand how educated beings, even men who, thanks to their gifts and their standing, play the part of responsible leaders, not only accepted believingly these prevarications and distortions, but, with them as a basis, immediately rendered a verdict against us. For he who publicly judges must be expected to have heard first both parties; and whoever is not in a position to do this must in decency be expected to postpone his verdict. Yes, even more than that, one should think that the sense of justice of every non-partisan must be violated if the one party is absolutely muzzled by the other, and even for this one reason the cause of the latter must be considered as not being free from reason for doubt. Furthermore, one should assume that he who once has been unmasked as a liar therewith should have lost the blind confidence of the impartial in his future assertions. In spite of this, although the first ridiculous news of German defeats and internal dissent could not withstand the far-sounding echo of facts, there still seems to be no twisting of the truth, no defamation, which over there is considered as too thin and too ridiculous by the press and as too shameless by the public.
Should the Germans, who, since the time when they fought for and attained their national unity, have exclusively devoted themselves to works of peace and culture, suddenly have been transformed into an adventurous, booty-hungry horde which from mere lust challenged a tremendously superior force to do battle? Should they suddenly have sacrificed to their so-called militarism all their other efforts in commerce, industry, art, and science, in order to risk their very existence for the love of this Moloch? Do you believe that, Americans?
Question of Militarism.
Our militarism! What does this expression, quoted until it is sickening, mean in the mouth of enemies who in respect of the energy and extent of their armaments were not behind us? Is there no such thing as militarism in France and in Russia? Is the English giant fleet an instrument of peace? Was the Triple Entente founded in order to bring about the millennium on earth? Would the Entente, if we had been foolish enough to disarm, have guaranteed our possessions as a reward for being good? Do you believe that, Americans?
It certainly may be difficult for the citizens of the Union—happy beings they are for it—to put themselves in the place of a nation that knows it is surrounded on its open borders by jealous, hateful, and greedy neighbors; of a country that for centuries has been the battlefield of all European wars, the place of strife of all the European peoples. They, the members of a nation which for itself occupies a space nearly as large as Europe, almost half of a continent, protected on both sides by the ocean and on the other borders not seriously threatened for as long a time to come as may be anticipated, have no people's army because they do not need any; and yet they would—their history proves it—give their blood and that of their sons for the cause of their nation just as gladly as we, if the necessity for doing so came to them. Will they, therefore, reproach us for loving our country not less than they do theirs, only for the reason that we have a thousand times more difficulty in protecting it?
Our general military service, which today is being defamed by the word "militarism," is born of the iron commandment of self-preservation. Without it the German Empire and the German Nation long ago would have been struck out of the list of the living. Only lack of knowledge or intentional misconception of our character could accuse us of having an aggressive motive back of it. On earth there is no more peaceful nation than Germany, providing she be left in peace and her room to breathe be not lessened. Germany never has had the least thought of assuming for herself the European hegemony, much less the rulership of the world. She has never greedily eyed colonial possessions of other great powers. On the contrary, in the acquisition of her colonies she was satisfied with whatever the others had left for her. And least of all did she carry up her sleeve a desire of extending the frontiers of the empire. The famous word of Bismarck, that Germany was "saturated" with acquired territory, is still accepted as fully in force to such an extent that even in case of her victory the question as to which parts of the enemies' territory we should claim for our own would cause us a great deal of perplexity. The German Empire could only lose as the national State she is in strength and unity by acquiring new and strange elements.
Otherwise would the empire, from the day of its founding until now, for nearly half a century, actually have avoided every war, often enough under the most difficult circumstances? Would it have quietly suffered the open or hidden challenges, the machinations of its enemies constantly appearing more plainly? Yes, would it have tried again and again to improve its relations with these very same enemies by the greatest advances? As opposed to the ill-concealed hostility of the French, would it not have been shaken in its steadfast policy of conciliation by the fact that this policy with them only made the impression of weakness and fear? Would it have permitted France to reconstruct her power which was destroyed in 1870 to a greater extent than before, and, in addition, allowed her to conquer a new and gigantic colonial empire? Would it have permitted prostrate Russia to recuperate undisturbed from the almost annihilating blows of the revolution and the Japanese war? Would it, in the countless threatening conflicts of the last decades, have on every occasion thrown the entire weight of its sword into the scales for the preservation of peace?
The Kaiser's Responsibility.
Then, too, many Americans emphasize the fact that they are making not the German people but the Emperor alone responsible for this war. It is hardly conceivable how serious-minded people can lend themselves to the spreading of a fable so childish. When William II., 29 years old, mounted the throne, the entire world said of him that his aim was the acquirement of the laurels of war. In spite of this for twenty-six years he has shown that this accusation was absurd and has proved himself to be the most honest and most dependable protector of European peace. In fact, the very circle of enemies which now dares to call him a military despot thirsting for glory, has year in and year out ridiculed him as a ruler, whose provocation to the very limit was an amusement absolutely fraught with no danger. He who has never been misled by the fiery enthusiasm of youth nor by the full strength of ripe manhood to adorn his brow with the bloody halo of glory, should he suddenly, when his hair is turned gray, have turned into a Caesar, an Attila? Do you believe that, Americans?
It is a fact in times of peace there have been certain differences of opinion between the Emperor and his people. Although at all times the honesty of his intentions was elevated above every doubt, the one or other impulsive moves he took to obtain their realization exposed him to criticism at home. Today one may safely admit that—today, when of these trifling disputes not even a breath, not even a shadow, remains. Never before has his whole people, his whole nation, in every grade of education, in all classes, in all parties, stood behind him so absolutely without reserve as now, when in the last, the very last hour, and driven by direst need, he finally drew the sword to ward off an attack from three sides, long ago prepared.
Our nation and our Emperor have not wanted this war and are not to be blamed for it. Even the "White Book" of the German Government, by the very uncontrovertible language of its documents, must convince every impartial being of this fact. And day by day the overwhelming evidence of the plot systematically hatched and systematically carried out under the guidance of England, which put before us the alternative of cutting our way through or being annihilated, is increasing.
No Treason to Austria Considered.
It may be that the catastrophe, so far as we are concerned, might have been staved off once more if we would have disregarded the obligation of our alliance and would have left Austria in the lurch—the Austria which did not want anything else than to put a stop to the nasty work of a band of assassins organized by a neighboring State. But it requires an extreme degree of political blindness for the assumption that by such cowardly treason we should have been able to purchase a change of mind or a lasting peace from our enemies. On the contrary, they would soon enough have used a suitable opportunity to fall upon Germany, which then would have been completely isolated, and the struggle for our national existence would have had to be fought under conditions very much more favorable to our enemies.
According to a newspaper report, the esteemed President Eliot of Harvard has written that the fear of the Muscovites could not explain our action, and that an alliance with the Western powers would have offered better protection against a Russian attack. Yes; if such a thing had been possible! As a matter of fact, however, the Western powers did not ally themselves with us against Russia, but with Russia against us; and not the fear of the Muscovites, but their mobilization, encouraged and aided by the very same Western powers, drove us to war. I wonder what President Eliot himself would have done under these circumstances had he been the guardian responsible for Germany's fate?
Belgium's Alleged Neutrality.
But then the violation of Belgian neutrality! How with the aid of this bugaboo the entire neutral world has been stirred up against us, after England made it the hypocritical excuse for her declaration of war! We knew very well that England and France were determined to violate this neutrality; but, then, we ought to have been very good; we ought to have waited until they did so. Waited until their armies would break into our country across our unprotected Belgian frontier! In other words, we ought to have committed national suicide. Whoever, even up until now, has doubted the German assertion that Belgium was under one roof with England and France, and had herself thrown away her neutrality, must have his eyes opened by the latest official developments. The documents of the Belgian General Staff which have fallen into our hands contain an agreement according to which the march through Belgium of British troops in the case of a Franco-German war was provided for in every detail. Whosoever in the face of these documents repeats the assertion that we have committed a violation of innocent Belgium gives aid to a historical forgery.
We have violated the alleged neutrality of Belgium in self-defense. On the other hand, the Japanese, egged on and supported by England, have violated the real neutrality of China from pure lust for robbery. For the three great powers allied against Germany and Austria have not been satisfied with their own nominal superiority of 220 millions against 110 millions! In addition to this they have urged on into war against us a Mongolian people, the most dangerous enemy of the white race and its culture. They have supplemented their armies by a motley collection of all the African negro tribes. They lead into battle against us Indian troops, and the Christian Germanic King of England prays to God for the victory of the heathen Hindus over his coreligionists and blood relatives. Americans, does your racial feeling, at other times so sensitive, remain silent in view of this unexampled shame? Do you accord to the English and the French, who are attacking us in co-operation with the Russians, the Servians, and the Montenegrins, who are dirtying themselves with a brotherhood in arms with the yellow skins, the brown skins, and the blacks, the right to declare themselves the representatives of civilization and us to be barbarians?
In order to drive home such evident absurdities, they were, of course, obliged to carry on the poisoning of the spring of information to the utmost, they had to suppress the news of the vile deeds of guerrillas and "snipers" in Belgium and of the Russian ghouls in East Prussia, that were crying to heaven, and to send out into the world instead fables of German brutality. Our national army, permeated with ethical seriousness and iron discipline, the scientist standing beside the farmer, the workman beside the artist, should be guilty of unnecessary severity, uncontrollable brutality, brutality against people unable to defend themselves? Do you believe that, Americans?
The Charge of Vandalism.
The climax of absurdity, however, is reached when the Germans, who in their love and appreciation of art are not surpassed by any people in the world, are accused of having raged as vandals against works of art. Even now these accusations, which the French Government itself had the pitiful courage to support, have proved totally groundless. The City Hall at Louvain stands uninjured; while the populace fired at them, our soldiers had, risking their own lives, saved it from the flames. An imperial art commission followed at the heels of our victorious troops in Belgium, in order to take charge of the guarding and administration of the treasures of art. The cathedral at Rheims has received but slight damage, and would not have been damaged at all had its tower not been misused by the French as an observation station. I should like to see the commander of an army who, for the sake of the safety of a historical monument, would forget the safety of the troops intrusted into his care!
Enough of it! What I have stated is sufficient to show what low weapons our enemies are using behind the battlefield to sully Germany's shield of honor. It is enough for those who care to listen at all. But, also, wherever the weak voice of one rebounds from ears stubbornly closed, the more powerful voice of truth eventually will force a more just verdict.
Justice—that is all that we expect from America. We respect its neutrality; we do not ask from it an ideal partisanship for our benefit. If it does not have for us the sympathy which we have already extended to it and, after a century and a half of unclouded intercourse between the two nations, have anticipated there, then we cannot imbue it with that spirit by reasoning. Furthermore, in the existence of nations sympathy is not the deciding factor, and every nation should be rebuked which out of regard for sympathy would in decisive matters act against its own interests. But just for that very reason one more question must be raised. In the present conflict, which momentarily almost splits the entire world into two camps, where do the interests of America lie?
That they are not lying on the side of Russia probably is self-evident. No free American can find desirable a further extension of the Russian world empire and of Russian despotism at the expense of Germany. But how about a country from which once America had to wrest its own liberty in bloody battle? How about England? Where, if England should succeed in downing Germany, would her eyes next be pointed? Has she not herself admitted that she is making war on us principally because she sees in us an uncomfortable competitor in trade? And which competitor would be the next one after us that would become awkward to the trust on the Thames? Yes, have they not already hauled off for the smash against America, when Japan is given opportunity to increase her power—the same Japan with whom America sooner or later will be bound to have an accounting and whose victory over us would make that accounting a great deal more difficult for the United States?
Germany's fate certainly does not depend upon the friendly or unfriendly feeling of America. It will be decided solely upon the European battlefields. But because we are looking out from the night to a future dawn, because in the midst of our national need the cause of humanity is close to our heart, for these reasons it is not immaterial to us how the greatest neutral nation of culture thinks of us. Americans, the cable between us has been cut. It is our wish and our hope that the stronger band that unites American ideals with German ideals shall not also be cut.
To the Civilized World
By Professors of Germany.
As representatives of German science and art, we hereby protest to the civilized world against the lies and calumnies with which our enemies are endeavoring to stain the honor of Germany in her hard struggle for existence—in a struggle which has been forced upon her.
The iron mouth of events has proved the untruth of the fictitious German defeats, consequently misrepresentation and calumny are all the more eagerly at work. As heralds of truth we raise our voices against these.
It is not true that Germany is guilty of having caused this war. Neither the people, the Government, nor the Kaiser wanted war. Germany did her utmost to prevent it; for this assertion the world has documental proof. Often enough during the twenty-six years of his reign has Wilhelm II. shown himself to be the upholder of peace, and often enough has this fact been acknowledged by our opponents. Nay, even the Kaiser they now dare to call an Attila has been ridiculed by them for years, because of his steadfast endeavors to maintain universal peace. Not till a numerical superiority which had been lying in wait on the frontiers assailed us did the whole nation rise to a man.
It is not true that we trespassed in neutral Belgium. It has been proved that France and England had resolved on such a trespass, and it has likewise been proved that Belgium had agreed to their doing so. It would have been suicide on our part not to have been beforehand.
It is not true that the life and property of a single Belgian citizen was injured by our soldiers without the bitterest self-defense having made it necessary; for again and again, notwithstanding repeated threats, the citizens lay in ambush, shooting at the troops out of the houses, mutilating the wounded, and murdering in cold blood the medical men while they were doing their Samaritan work. There can be no baser abuse than the suppression of these crimes with the view of letting the Germans appear to be criminals, only for having justly punished these assassins for their wicked deeds.
It is not true that our troops treated Louvain brutally. Furious inhabitants having treacherously fallen upon them in their quarters, our troops with aching hearts were obliged to fire a part of the town as a punishment. The greatest part of Louvain has been preserved. The famous Town Hall stands quite intact; for at great self-sacrifice our soldiers saved it from destruction by the flames. Every German would of course greatly regret if in the course of this terrible war any works of art should already have been destroyed or be destroyed at some future time, but inasmuch as in our great love for art we cannot be surpassed by any other nation, in the same degree we must decidedly refuse to buy a German defeat at the cost of saving a work of art.
It is not true that our warfare pays no respect to international laws. It knows no indisciplined cruelty. But in the east the earth is saturated with the blood of women and children unmercifully butchered by the wild Russian troops, and in the west dumdum bullets mutilate the breasts of our soldiers. Those who have allied themselves with Russians and Servians, and present such a shameful scene to the world as that of inciting Mongolians and negroes against the white race, have no right whatever to call themselves upholders of civilization.
It is not true that the combat against our so-called militarism is not a combat against our civilization, as our enemies hypocritically pretend it is. Were it not for German militarism German civilization would long since have been extirpated. For its protection it arose in a land which for centuries had been plagued by bands of robbers as no other land had been. The German Army and the German people are one and today this consciousness fraternizes 70,000,000 of Germans, all ranks, positions, and parties being one.
We cannot wrest the poisonous weapon—the lie—out of the hands of our enemies. All we can do is to proclaim to all the world that our enemies are giving false witness against us. You, who know us, who with us have protected the most holy possessions of man, we call to you:
Have faith in us! Believe that we shall carry on this war to the end as a civilized nation, to whom the legacy of a Goethe, a Beethoven, and a Kant is just as sacred as its own hearths and homes.
For this we pledge you our names and our honor:
ADOLF VON BAEYER, Professor of Chemistry, Munich.
Prof. PETER BEHRENS, Berlin.
EMIL VON BEHRING, Professor of Medicine, Marburg.
WILHELM VON BODE, General Director of the Royal Museums, Berlin.
ALOIS BRANDL, Professor, President of the Shakespeare Society, Berlin.
LUJU BRENTANO, Professor of National Economy, Munich.
Prof. JUSTUS BRINKMANN, Museum Director, Hamburg.
JOHANNES CONRAD, Professor of National Economy, Halle.
FRANZ VON DEFREGGER, Munich.
RICHARD DEHMEL, Hamburg.
ADOLF DEITZMANN, Professor of Theology, Berlin.
Prof. WILHELM DOERPFELD, Berlin.
FRIEDRICH VON DUHN, Professor of Archaeology, Heidelberg.
Prof. PAUL EHRLICH, Frankfort on the Main.
ALBERT EHRHARD, Professor of Roman Catholic Theology, Strassburg.
KARL ENGLER, Professor of Chemistry, Karlsruhe.
GERHARD ESSER, Professor of Roman Catholic Theology, Bonn.
RUDOLF EUCKEN, Professor of Philosophy, Jena.
HERBERT EULENBERG, Kaiserswerth.
HEINRICH FINKE, Professor of History, Freiburg.
EMIL FISCHER, Professor of Chemistry, Berlin.
WILHELM FOERSTER, Professor of Astronomy, Berlin.
LUDWIG FULDA, Berlin.
EDUARD VON GEBHARDT, Dusseldorf.
J.J. DE GROOT, Professor of Ethnography, Berlin.
FRITZ HABER, Professor of Chemistry, Berlin.
ERNST HAECKEL, Professor of Zoology, Jena.
MAX HALBE, Munich.
Prof. ADOLF VON HARNACK, General Director of the Royal Library, Berlin.
GERHART HAUPTMANN, Agnetendorf.
KARL, HAUPTMANN, Schreiberhau.
GUSTAV HELLMANN, Professor of Meteorology, Berlin.
WILHELM HERRMANN, Professor of Protestant Theology, Marburg.
ANDREAS HEUSLER, Professor of Northern Philology, Berlin.
ADOLF VON HILDEBRAND, Munich.
LUDWIG HOFFMANN, City Architect. Berlin.
ENGELBERT HUMPERDINCK, Berlin.
LEOPOLD GRAF KALCKREUTH, President of the German Confederation of Artists, Eddelsen.
ARTHUR KAMPF, Berlin.
FRITZ AUG. VON KAULBACH, Munich.
THEODOR KIPP, Professor of Jurisprudence, Berlin.
FELIX KLEIN, Professor of Mathematics, Goettingen.
MAX KLINGER, Leipsic.
ALOIS KNOEPFLER, Professor of History of Art, Munich.
ANTON KOCH, Professor of Roman Catholic Theology, Münster.
PAUL LABAND, Professor of Jurisprudence, Strassburg.
KARL LEMPRECHT, Professor of History, Leipsic.
PHILIPP LENARD, Professor of Physics, Heidelberg.
MAX LENZ, Professor of History, Hamburg.
MAX LIEBERMANN, Berlin.
FRANZ VON LISZT, Professor of Jurisprudence, Berlin.
LUDWIG MANZEL, President of the Academy of Arts, Berlin.
JOSEF MAUSBACH, Professor of Roman Catholic Theology, Münster.
GEORG VON MAYR, Professor of Political Sciences, Munich.
SEBASTIAN MERKLE, Professor of Roman Catholic Theology, Wurzburg.
EDUARD MEYER, Professor of History, Berlin.
HEINRICH MORF, Professor of Roman Philology, Berlin.
FRIEDRICH NAUMANN, Berlin.
ALBERT NEISSER, Professor of Medicine, Breslau.
WALTER NERNST, Professor of Physics, Berlin.
WILHELM OSTWALD, Professor of Chemistry, Leipsic.
BRUNO PAUL, Director of School for Applied Arts, Berlin.
MAX PLANCK, Professor of Physics, Berlin.
ALBERT PLEHN, Professor of Medicine, Berlin.
GEORG REICKE, Berlin.
Prof. MAX REINHARDT, Director of the German Theatre, Berlin.
ALOIS RIEHL, Professor of Philosophy, Berlin.
KARL ROBERT, Professor of Archaeology, Halle.
WILHELM ROENTGEN, Professor of Physics, Munich.
MAX RUBNER, Professor of Medicine, Berlin.
FRITZ SCHAPER, Berlin.
ADOLF VON SCHLATTER, Professor of Protestant Theology, Tubingen.
AUGUST SCHMIDLIN, Professor of Sacred History, Münster.
GUSTAV VON SCHMOLLER, Professor of National Economy, Berlin.
FRANZ VON STUCK, Munich.
REINHOLD SEEBERG, Professor of Protestant Theology, Berlin.
MARTIN SPAHN, Professor of History, Strassburg.
HERMANN SUDERMANN, Berlin.
HANS THOMA, Karlsruhe.
WILHELM TRUEBNER, Karlsruhe.
KARL VOLLMOELLER, Stuttgart.
RICHARD VOTZ, Berchtesgaden.
KARL VOTZLER, Professor of Roman Philology, Munich.
SIEGFRIED WAGNER, Baireuth.
WILHELM WALDEYER, Professor of Anatomy, Berlin.
AUGUST VON WASSERMANN, Professor of Medicine, Berlin.
FELIX VON WEINGARTNER.
THEODOR WIEGAND, Museum Director, Berlin.
WILHELM WIEN, Professor of Physics, Wurzburg.
ULRICH VON WILAMOWITZ-MOELLEN-DORFF, Professor of Philology, Berlin.
RICHARD WILLSTAETTER, Professor of Chemistry, Berlin.
WILHELM WINDELBAND, Professor of Philosophy, Heidelberg.
WILHELM WUNDT, Professor of Philosophy, Leipsic,
Appeal of the German Universities
The campaign of systematic lies and slander which has been carried on against the German people and empire for years has since the outbreak of the war surpassed everything with which one might have credited even the most unscrupulous press. To repudiate any charges raised against our Kaiser and his Government rests with the authorities in question. They have done so, and their defense is substantiated by striking proofs. He who wants to know the truth can learn it, and we trust that truth will prevail. But if we are to look on, when our enemies, guided by envy and malice, are shameless enough to charge our army and with it our whole nation with barbarous atrocities and senseless vandalism, and when their statements appear to be believed, to a certain extent, among neutrals and in places which, at other times, were well disposed toward us; if we are quietly to look on when all this happens, we, the appointed trustees of culture and education in our Fatherland, feel in duty bound to break the reserve which our calling and position impose on us with a strong expression of protest. Hence we now appeal to the learned bodies with whom we hitherto worked in common in the interests of the highest ideals of the human race and with whom, even at this time, when hatred and passion rule the world and confuse the minds of men, we hope to remain of the same mind, in the same service of truth. We appeal to them in the confident belief that our voice will find hearing, and that the expression of our honest indignation will meet with credence. Moreover, we appeal to the love of truth and to the sense of justice of the many thousands all over the world who, being welcome guests in our educational institutions, have taken part in the inheritance of German culture, and who thus have had an opportunity of watching and appreciating the German people in peaceful labor, their industry and uprightness, their sense of order and discipline, their reverence for intellectual work of every kind, and their profound love for sciences and arts. All of you who know that our army is no mercenary host but embraces the entire nation from first to last, that it is led by the country's best sons, and that, at this very hour, thousands from our midst, teachers as well as students, are shedding their life's blood as officers and soldiers on the battlefields of Russia and France; you who have seen and heard for yourselves in what spirit and with what success our youths are treated and taught, and that nothing is stamped upon their minds more deeply than reverence and admiration for artistic, scientific and technical creations of the human mind, no matter what country and nation brought them forth; we call upon you who know all this as witnesses, whether it can be true what our enemies report that the German Army is a horde of barbarians and a band of incendiaries who take pleasure in leveling defenseless cities to the ground and in destroying venerable monuments of history and art. If you wish to pay honor to the cause of truth you will be as firmly convinced as we are that German troops, wherever they had to do destructive work, could only have done so in the bitterness of defensive warfare. But we appeal to all those whom the slanderous reports of our enemies reach and who are not yet altogether blinded by passion, in the name of truth and justice, to shut their ears to such insults to the German people, and not allow themselves to be prejudiced by those who prove ever anew that they hope to be victorious by the instrumentality of lies. Now, if in this fearful war, in which our nation is compelled to fight not only for its power, but for its very existence and its entire civilization, the work of destruction should be greater than in former wars, and if many a precious achievement of culture falls to ruin, the responsibility for all this entirely rests with those who were not content with letting loose this ruthless war, nay, who did not even shrink from pressing murderous weapons upon a peaceful population for them to fall surreptitiously upon our troops who trusted in the observance of the military usages of all civilized peoples. They alone are the guilty authors of everything which happens here. Upon their heads the verdict of history will fall for the lasting injury which culture suffers.
September, 1914.
UNIVERSITIES.
Tuebingen, Berlin, Bonn, Breslau, Erlangen, Frankfurt, Freiburg, Giessen, Goettingen, Greifswald, Halle, Heidelberg, Jena, Kiel, Königsberg, Leipzig, Marburg, Muenchen, Münster, Rostock, Strassburg, Wuerzburg.
Reply to the German Professors
By British Scholars.
We see with regret the names of many German professors and men of science, whom we regard with respect and, in some cases, with personal friendship, appended to a denunciation of Great Britain so utterly baseless that we can hardly believe that it expresses their spontaneous or considered opinion. We do not question for a moment their personal sincerity when they express their horror of war and their zeal for "the achievements of culture." Yet we are bound to point out that a very different view of war, and of national aggrandizement based on the threat of war, has been advocated by such influential writers as Nietzsche, von Treitschke, von Bülow, and von Bernhardi, and has received widespread support from the press and from public opinion in Germany. This has not occurred, and in our judgment would scarcely be possible, in any other civilized country. We must also remark that it is German armies alone which have, at the present time, deliberately destroyed or bombarded such monuments of human culture as the Library at Louvain and the Cathedrals at Rheims and Malines.
The Diplomatic Papers.
No doubt it is hard for human beings to weigh justly their country's quarrels; perhaps particularly hard for Germans, who have been reared in an atmosphere of devotion to their Kaiser and his army; who are feeling acutely at the present hour, and who live under a Government which, we believe, does not allow them to know the truth. Yet it is the duty of learned men to make sure of their facts. The German "White Book" contains only some scanty and carefully explained selections from the diplomatic correspondence which preceded this war. And we venture to hope that our German colleagues will sooner or later do their best to get access to the full correspondence, and will form therefrom an independent judgment.
They will then see that, from the issue of the Austrian note to Servia onward, Great Britain, whom they accuse of causing this war, strove incessantly for peace, Her successive proposals were supported by France, Russia, and Italy, but, unfortunately, not by the one power which could by a single word at Vienna have made peace certain. Germany, in her own official defense—incomplete as that document is—does not pretend that she strove for peace; she only strove for "the localization of the conflict." She claimed that Austria should be left free to "chastise" Servia in whatever way she chose. At most she proposed that Austria should not annex a portion of Servian territory—a futile provision, since the execution of Austria's demand would have made the whole of Servia subject to her will.
Great Britain, like the rest of Europe, recognized that, whatever just grounds of complaint Austria may have had, the unprecedented terms of her note to Servia constituted a challenge to Russia and a provocation to war. The Austrian Emperor in his proclamation admitted that war was likely to ensue. The German "White Book" states in so many words: "We were perfectly aware that a possible warlike attitude of Austria-Hungary against Servia might bring Russia upon the field and therefore involve us in war. * * * We could not, however, * * * advise our ally to take a yielding attitude not compatible with his dignity." The German Government admits having known the tenor of the Austrian note beforehand, when it was concealed from all the other powers; admits backing it up after it was issued; admits that it knew the note was likely to precipitate war; and admits that, whatever professions it made to the other powers, in private it did not advise Austria to abate one jot of her demands. This, to our minds, is tantamount to admitting that Germany has, together with her unfortunate ally, deliberately provoked the present war.
One point we freely admit. Germany would very likely have preferred not to fight Great Britain at this moment. She would have preferred to weaken and humiliate Russia; to make Servia a dependent of Austria; to render France innocuous and Belgium subservient; and then, having established an overwhelming advantage, to settle accounts with Great Britain. Her grievance against us is that we did not allow her to do this.
Britain's Love of Peace.
So deeply rooted is Great Britain's love of peace, so influential among us are those who have labored through many difficult years to promote good feeling between this country and Germany, that, in spite of our ties of friendship with France, in spite of the manifest danger threatening ourselves, there was still, up to the last moment, a strong desire to preserve British neutrality, if it could be preserved without dishonor. But Germany herself made this impossible.
Great Britain, together with France, Russia, Prussia, and Austria, had solemnly guaranteed the neutrality of Belgium. In the preservation of this neutrality our deepest sentiments and our most vital interests are alike involved. Its violation would not only shatter the independence of Belgium itself: it would undermine the whole basis which renders possible the neutrality of any State and the very existence of such States as are much weaker than their neighbors. We acted in 1914 just as we acted in 1870. We sought from both France and Germany assurances that they would respect Belgian neutrality. In 1870 both powers assured us of their good intentions, and both kept their promises. In 1914 France gave immediately, on July 31, the required assurance; Germany refused to answer. When, after this sinister silence, Germany proceeded to break under our eyes the treaty which we and she had both signed, evidently expecting Great Britain to be her timid accomplice, then even to the most peace-loving Englishman hesitation became impossible. Belgium had appealed to Great Britain to keep her word, and she kept it.
The German professors appear to think that Germany has in this matter some considerable body of sympathizers in the universities of Great Britain. They are gravely mistaken. Never within our lifetime has this country been so united on any great political issue. We ourselves have a real and deep admiration for German scholarship and science. We have many ties with Germany, ties of comradeship, of respect, and of affection. We grieve profoundly that, under the baleful influence of a military system and its lawless dreams of conquest, she whom we once honored now stands revealed as the common enemy of Europe and of all peoples which respect the law of nations. We must carry on the war on which we have entered. For us, as for Belgium, it is a war of defense, waged for liberty and peace.
Sir CLIFFORD ALLBUTT, Regius Professor of Physics, Cambridge.
T.W. ALLEN, Reader in Greek, Oxford.
E. ARMSTRONG, Pro-Provost of Queen's College, Oxford.
E.V. ARNOLD, Professor of Latin, University College of North Wales.
Sir C.B. BALL, Regius Professor of Surgery, Dublin.
Sir THOMAS BARLOW, President of the Royal College of Physicians, London.
BERNARD BOSANQUET, formerly Professor of Moral Philosophy, St. Andrews.
A.C. BRADLEY, formerly Professor of Poetry, Oxford.
W.H. BRAGG, Cavendish Professor of Physics, Leeds.
Sir THOMAS BROCK, Membre d'honneur de la Société des Artistes Francais.
A.J. BROWN, Professor of Biology and Chemistry of Fermentation, University of Birmingham.
JOHN BURNET, Professor of Greek, St. Andrews.
J.B. BURY, Regius Professor of Modern History, Cambridge.
Sir W.W. CHEYNE, Professor of Clinical Surgery, King's College, London, President of the Royal College of Surgeons.
J. NORMAN COLLIE, Professor of Organic Chemistry and Director of the Chemical Laboratories, University College, London.
F.C. CONYBEARE, Honorary Fellow of University College, Oxford.
Sir HENRY CRAIK, M.P. for Glasgow and Aberdeen Universities.
Sir JAMES CRICHTON-BROWNE, Vice President and Treasurer, Royal Institution.
Sir WILLIAM CROOKES, President of the Royal Society.
Sir FOSTER CUNLIFFE, Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford.
Sir FRANCIS DARWIN, late Reader in Botany, Cambridge.
A.V. DICEY, Fellow of All Souls College and formerly Vinerian Professor of English Law, Oxford.
Sir S. DILL, Hon. Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.
Sir JAMES DONALDSON, Vice Chancellor and Principal of the University of St. Andrews.
F.W. DYSON, Astronomer Royal.
Sir EDWARD ELGAR.
Sir ARTHUR EVANS, Extraordinary Professor of Prehistoric Archæology, Oxford.
L.R. FARNELL, Rector of Exeter College, Oxford.
C.H. FIRTH, Regius Professor of Modern History, Oxford.
H.A.L. FISHER, Vice Chancellor of Sheffield University.
J.A. FLEMING, Professor of Electrical Engineering in the University of London.
H.S. FOXWELL, Professor of Political Economy in the University of London.
Sir EDWARD FRY, Ambassador Extraordinary and First British Plenipotentiary to The Hague Peace Conference in 1907.
Sir ARCHIBALD GEIKIE, Past President of the Royal Society.
W.M. GELDART, Fellow of All Souls and Vinerian Professor of English Law, Oxford.
Sir RICKMAN GODLEE, Emeritus Professor of Clinical Surgery, University College, London.
B.P. GRENFELL, late Professor of Papyrology, Oxford.
E.H. GRIFFITHS, Principal of the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire.
W.H. HADOW, Principal of Armstrong College, Newcastle.
J.S. HALDANE, late Reader in Physiology, Oxford.
MARCUS HARTOG, Professor of Zoology in University College, Cork.
F.J. HAVERFIELD, Camden Professor of Ancient History, Oxford.
W.A. HERDMAN, Professor of Zoology at Liverpool, General Secretary of the British Association.
Sir W.P. HERRINGHAM, Vice Chancellor of the University of London.
E.W. HOBSON, Sadleirian Professor of Pure Mathematics, Cambridge.
D.G. HOGARTH, Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
Sir ALFRED HOPKINSON, late Vice Chancellor of Manchester University.
A.S. HUNT, Professor of Papyrology, Oxford.
HENRY JACKSON, Regius Professor of Greek, Cambridge.
Sir THOMAS G. JACKSON, R.A.
F.B. JEVONS, Professor of Philosophy, Durham.
H.H. JOACHIM, Fellow of Merton College, Oxford.
J. JOLLY, Professor of Geology and Mineralogy, University of Dublin.
COURTNEY KENNY, Downing Professor of the Laws of England, Cambridge.
Sir F.G. KENYON, Director and Principal Librarian, British Museum.
HORACE LAMB, Professor of Mathematics, Manchester University.
J.N. LANGLEY, Professor of Physiology, Cambridge.
WALTER LEAF, Fellow of London University, President of the Hellenic Society.
Sir SIDNEY LEE, Editor of the Dictionary of National Biography, Professor of the English Language and Literature in the University of London.
Sir OLIVER LODGE, Principal of Birmingham University.
Sir DONALD MACALISTER, Principal and Vice Chancellor, Glasgow.
R.W. MACAN, Master of University College, Oxford.
Sir WILLIAM MACEWEN, Professor of Surgery, Glasgow.
J.W. MACKAIL, formerly Professor of Poetry, Oxford.
Sir PATRICK MANSON.
R.R. MARETT, Reader in Social Anthropology, Oxford.
D.S. MARGOLIOUTH, Laudian Professor of Arabic, Oxford.
Sir H.A. MIERS, Principal of the University of London.
FREDERICK W. MOTT, Fullerian Professor of Physiology, Royal Institution.
LORD MOULTON OF BANK, Lord of Appeal in Ordinary.
J.E.H. MURPHY, Professor of Irish, Dublin.
GILBERT MURRAY, Regius Professor of Greek, Oxford.
J.L. MYRES, Wykeham Professor of Ancient History, Oxford.
G.H.F. NUTTALL, Quick Professor of Biology, Cambridge.
Sir W. OSLER, Regius Professor of Medicine, Oxford.
Sir ISAMBARD OWEN, Vice Chancellor of the University of Bristol.
Sir WALTER PARRATT, Professor of Music, Oxford.
Sir HUBERT PARRY, Director of Royal College of Music.
W.H. PERKIN, Waynflete Professor of Chemistry, Oxford.
W.M. FLINDERS PETRIE EDWARDS, Professor of Egyptology, University College, London.
A.F. POLLARD, Professor of English History, London.
Sir F. POLLOCK, formerly Corpus Professor of Jurisprudence, Oxford.
EDWARD B. POULTON, Hope Professor of Zoology, Oxford.
Sir E.J. POYNTER, President of the Royal Academy of Arts.
Sir A. QUILLER-COUCH, King Edward VII. Professor of English Literature, Cambridge.
Sir WALTER RALEIGH, Professor of English Literature, Oxford.
Sir W. RAMSAY, Emeritus Professor of Chemistry, London.
Lord RAYLEIGH, Past President Royal Society, Nobel Laureate, Chancellor of Cambridge University.
Lord REAY, First President British Academy.
JAMES REID, Professor of Ancient History, Cambridge.
WILLIAM RIDGEWAY, Disney Professor of Archaeology, Cambridge.
T.F. ROBERTS, Principal of the University College of Wales, Aberystwith.
J. HOLLAND ROSE, Reader in Modern History, Cambridge.
Sir RONALD ROSS, formerly Professor of Tropical Medicine, Liverpool, Nobel Laureate.
M.E. SADLER, Vice Chancellor of Leeds.
W. SANDAY, Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity, Oxford.
Sir J.E. SANDYS, Public Orator, Cambridge.
Sir ERNEST SATOW, Second British Delegate to The Hague Peace Conference in 1907.
A.H. SAYCE, Professor of Assyriology, Oxford.
ARTHUR SCHUSTER, late Professor of Physics, Manchester.
D.H. SCOTT, Foreign Secretary, Royal Society.
C.S. SHERRINGTON, Waynflete Professor of Physiology, Oxford.
GEORGE ADAM SMITH, Principal and Vice Chancellor, Aberdeen.
G.C. MOORE SMITH, Professor of English Language and Literature, Sheffield.
E.A. SONNENSCHEIN, Professor of Latin and Greek, Birmingham.
W.R. SORLEY, Professor of Moral Philosophy, Cambridge.
Sir C.V. STANFORD, Profesor of Music, Cambridge.
V.H. STANTON, Ely Professor of Divinity, Cambridge.
J. ARTHUR THOMSON, Regius Professor of Natural History, Aberdeen.
Sir J.J. THOMSON, Professor of Experimental Physics, Cambridge.
T.F. TOUT, Professor of Mediæval and Modern History, Manchester.
Sir W. TURNER, Principal and Vice Chancellor, Edinburgh.
Sir C. WALDSTEIN, late Reader in Classical Archæology and Slade Professor of Fine Art, Cambridge.
Sir J. WOLFE-BARRY.
Sir ALMROTH WRIGHT, formerly Professor of Pathology, Netley.
C.T. HAGBERG WRIGHT, Librarian, London Library.
JOSEPH WRIGHT, Professor of Comparative Philology, Oxford.
Concerning the German Professors
By Frederic Harrison.
To the Editor of the London Morning Post:
Sir: I was not invited to join the reply of our distinguished scholars and professors, perhaps because it is so many years since I was the colleague of James Bryce as Professor of Jurisprudence to the Inns of Court. And, indeed, I do not care to bandy recriminations with these German defenders of the attack on civilization by the whole imperial, military, and bureaucratic order. It seems to me waste of time and loss of self-respect to notice these pedants.
The whole German press and the entire academic class seem to be banded together as an official bureau in order to spread mendacious insults and spiteful slanders. Not a word comes from them to excuse or deny the defiance of public law and the mockery of public faith by the German Emperor, his Ministers, and his armies. These professors seem to exult in serving the new Attila—rather let us say the new Caligula, for Attila at least was an open soldier and did not skulk under the Red Cross behind barbed wire fences.
We have long known that all German academic and scholastic officials are the creatures of the Government, as obedient to orders as any Drill Sergeant. They seem to have sold their consciences for place. Not a word comes from them even of regret for the massacre of civilians on false charges, for the wanton murder of children, for the wholesale rape of women, the showering of bombs upon sleeping towns in sheer cruelty of destruction. The intellectual energies of Kultur seem concentrated on distorting the meaning of our dispatches and the speeches of our statesmen, and in manufacturing for their people and neutrals venomous falsehoods. German Geist today is a huge machine to cram lies upon their own people, and to insinuate lies to the world around. Their system of war is based upon lying at home and abroad, on treachery and terrorism. They think that murdering a few civilians would terrify France into surrender, and will drive England to betray the Allies. Their poor conscripts are told that we kill and torture prisoners; their monuments at home are bedizened with mock laurels; and neutrals are poisoned with wild inventions.
For years past their public men, have been tricking our politicians, journalists, and professors to accept them as peaceful leaders of a higher civilization—- while all the while their soldiers, diplomats, and spies (the three are really but one class) were secretly courting our own royalties and society, studying our naval and military defenses, filling our homes with tens of thousands of reservists having secret orders to spy, to destroy our arsenals and roads, and even planting out bogus industries and laying concrete bases for cannon, to bombard the open towns of friendly nations. We have been living unsuspectingly with a nation of assassins plotting to destroy us. Did these professors of Kultur not know of this elaborate conspiracy of Kaisertum, which unites the stealthy treachery of a Mohawk or a thug to the miracles of modern science? For years past the ideal of Kultur has been to lay down secret mines to destroy their peaceful neighbors. Did these professors of the Fatheland not know this? Then they are unable to grasp the most obvious facts—the life work of their own masters under their own eyes. And, if they did know it, and must at least know it now, and yet approve and glory in it, they must be beneath contempt. Why argue with such hypocrites?
Not a few of us have known and watched this conspiracy for years. I have preached this ever since the advent of Bismarckism and the new Europe that was formed forty years ago. Not a few of us have foretold not only the tremendous attack on the British Empire designed by German sea power but the precise steps of the war upon France, through Belgium, and to be executed by an overwhelming force of sudden shock in the midst of peace. For my part, nothing in this war since July 30 has at all surprised me, unless it be the foul cruelty with which Belgian civilians have been treated. Indeed, in January, 1913, I wrote a warning which reads now like a summary of events that have since happened. I was denounced as a senile alarmist by some who are now the loudest in calling to arms. Alas! too late is their repentance.
May I ask why our eminent academicians and scholars who still profess "friendship and admiration" for their German confrères never even suspected the huge conspiracy of which civilization has been the victim? Why did they accept the stars and crosses of Caligula-Attila? Why hob-nob with the docile creatures of his chancery, and spread at home and abroad the worship of Geist and Kultur? Are they fit to instruct us about politics, public law, and international relations, when they were so egregiously mistaken, so blind, so befooled, with regard to the most portentous catastrophe in the memory of living men? I am glad that they see their blindness now—but why this sentimental friendliness for those who hoodwinked them?
Surely this should open their eyes to the mountains of pretentious clouds on which the claims of Kultur rest. I am myself a student of German learning, and quite aware of the enormous industry, subtlety, and ingenuity of German scholarship. We owe deep gratitude to the older race of the Savignys, Rankes, Mommsens. Since 1851 I have been five times in Germany on different occasions down to 1900. I read and speak the language, and twice I lived in Germany for months together, even in the house of a distinguished man of science. I study their theology, their sociology, economics, history, and their classics. I am quite aware of the supremacy of German scholars in ancient literature, in many branches of science, in the record of the past in art, manners, and civilization. But to have edited a Greek play or to have discovered a new explosive, a new comet, another microbe, does not qualify a savant to dogmatize on international morals and the hegemony of the world. Sixty years ago in Leipzig the editor of a famous journal undertook to prove to me that Shakespeare was a German. Our poet, he said, was the grandest output of the Teutonic mind; nine-tenths of the Teutonic mind was German-argal, Shakespeare was a German, Q.E.D.
With the vast accumulation of solid knowledge of provable facts there is too often in the German mind a sudden bounding up into a cloudland of crude and unproved guesswork. In the logic of Kultur there seems to be a huge gap in the reasoning of the middle terms. A savant unearths a manuscript in Syria, which he deciphers with marvelous industry, learning, and ingenuity. Straightway he cries, "Eureka, behold the original Gospel—the true Gospel!" and he proceeds to turn Christianity upside down. He may have experimented on cultures of microbes for a generation; and then he calls on earth and heaven to acknowledge the mystery of the self-creation of the universe. We hear much of Treitschke today—no doubt a man of genius with a gift for research—but what ferocious pyrotechnics were poured forth by this apostle of mendacious swagger. And as to Nietzsche, he was anticipated by Shakespeare in Timon—a diseased cynic—
henceforth hated be
Of Timon, man and all humanity.
They seem to think that to have put the critics right about a few lines in Sophocles, or to have discovered a new chemical dye, dispenses the German Superman from being bound to humanity, truthfulness, and honor. Charge them with the mutilation of little girls and the violation of nuns in Belgium, and they reply: Yes! but think of Kant and Hegel! It is treason to philosophy, they say, that a man who has translated Schopenhauer should condemn Germans for burning Malines and making captive women a screen for troops in battle. Kultur, it seems, has its own "higher law," which its professors expound to the decadent nations of Europe.
Let us hold no parley with these arrogant sophists. Let all intellectual commerce be suspended until these official professors have unlearned the infernal code of "military necessity" and "world policy" which, to the indignation of the civilized world, they are ordered by the Vicegerent of God at Potsdam to teach to the great Teutonic Super-race. Yours, &c.,
FREDERIC HARRISON.
Bath, Oct. 29.
The Reply From France
By M. Yves Guyot and Prof. Bellet.
The following is the text of an open lettert addressed by M. Yves Guyot, Editor-in-Chief of the Journal des Economistes, and M. Bellet, Professor at the Schools of Political Science and Commercial Studies, to Prof. Brentano of the University of Munich, the communication being a reply to the recent German Appeal to Civilized Nations on the subject of the war:
PARIS, Oct. 15, 1914.
To Prof. Brentano of the University of Munich:
Very Learned Professor and Colleague: On reading the Appeal to Civilized Nations, (among which France is evidently not included,) which has just been sent forth by ninety-three persons declaring themselves to be representatives of German science and art, we were not surprised to find Prof. Schmoller's signature. He had already shown his hatred for France by refusing to assist at the gatherings organized, a little more than two years ago, to celebrate the seventieth anniversary of the Paris Society of Political Economy, (gatherings at which we were happy to enjoy your presence and that of your colleague, Mr. Lotz.) In his Rector's speech at the Berlin University, in 1897, he declared that German science had no other object than to celebrate the imperial messages of 1880 and 1890; and he pointed out that every disciple of Adam Smith who was not willing to make it a servant of that policy "should resign his seat." But we felt painful surprise when, at the foot of the said factum, we found your name side by side with his.
You and the other representatives of German science and art accuse France, Great Britain, Belgium, and Russia of falsehood. Would you have submitted, on the part of one of your pupils, to so grave an imputation, so lightly bandied? Admitting you to be in absolute ignorance of the documents published since the war declaration, you have certainly been acquainted with the ultimatum pronounced by Austria to Servia. It must have struck you with surprise; for it stands as a unique diplomatic document in all history. Did you not ask yourselves whether the demands of Austria did not go beyond all bounds, seeing that they insisted on the abdication of an independent State? You learned that, in spite of Servia's humble reply, because it contained a reservation, immediately, without discussion, the Ambassador of Austria-Hungary left Belgrade, and that the following day Austria declared war. You do not ignore the steps taken by Great Britain and France, the demand for delay made by Russia, and the reply of the German Chancellor "that none should intervene between Austria and Servia." He elegantly qualified the attitude thus adopted as "localizing the conflict."
Is there a single member among those who signed the document of Intellectuals who has been able to believe—have you been able to believe, Mr. Brentano, with your quick and perspicacious mind?—that this reply from Berlin did not imply war as a fatal consequence; for any nation accepting it was certain to be treated in future, by Germany, as the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy treated Servia? How, then, knowing the initial pretext of the war, are you able to realize that there was no other relation between this cause and the effect produced than the will of those who made use of it to provoke either a dishonoring humiliation for the countries accepting such a situation, or a general conflagration? How, then, do you, and the signatories of your appeal, dare to state: "It is not true that Germany provoked the war"? You dare to speak of proofs taken from authentic documents. Those published by Great Britain, Russia, and Belgium are known. All agree; and they give clear proof that the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum was pronounced with full complicity of the Berlin Chancellery. They prove, moreover, that the German Ambassador at Petrograd, fearing a withdrawal on the part of Hungary, precipitated events while your Emperor kept himself out of the way. Meanwhile, your General Staff had, in underhanded manner, mobilized a portion of its troops, by individual call, while in France we waited, unable to imagine that the German Government had resolved to engage in European war without motives. In the pocketbooks of your reservists have been found forms calling them to the army long before the end of July. Our friend and colleague, Courcelle-Seneuil, has seen the military book of a German living in Switzerland, at Bex, containing this call.
Bismarckian Loyalty.
Correspondence of official nature has been stopped at the Cape, which should have reached in full time officers of the German Navy, warning them to prepare for mid-July. Such advance taken by your troops has rendered the task the more difficult for ours. We were very simple, for we believed in the affirmations of your statesmen. You state that these are loyal war methods; so be it. That belongs to the diplomatic rules of loyalty bequeathed by Bismarck to his successors. But to attempt to carry on this falsehood, you have no longer the excuse of its utility. It is clear to all, except, it seems, the representatives of science and art in Germany, who are sufficiently devoid of perspicacity to ignore it.
They affirm, moreover, that Germany has not violated the neutrality of Belgium; she merely contented herself with "taking the first step." Beyond the authentic proofs which have been published, we would draw your attention to an undeniable fact. Trusting in the treaty which guaranteed Belgium neutrality—and at the foot of which figured Germany's signature—in the promise made a short while ago to the King of the Belgians by your Emperor, we unfortunately left our northern frontier unguarded. You must be aware, professor, that the English did not move until Belgian soil had been effectively violated. It is true that we knew the plan of campaign set forth by Gen. Bernhardi, but we naïvely believed that, whatever might be the opinion of a General, the Chancellor of the Empire would consider a treaty bearing the imperial signature as something more than a mere "bit of paper." Germany has also been untrue to her signature by violating the treaty of neutrality of Luxembourg. You forgot to state that there also you only "took the first step." Your appeal echoes the German papers, which declare that it was the Belgians, and particularly the women, who "began against your troops." An American paper replied by stating that if it was the Belgian women who attacked German soldiers on Belgian soil, what were the soldiers doing there? The truth is that your troops, obeying their officers, as is proved by papers which have been seized and which you would find quoted in the report presented by the Belgian Commission to President Wilson, have executed orders which seem inspired by the ferocious inscriptions of Assyrian Kings, no doubt exhumed on the Bagdad railway line; and you think it quite natural that massacre and arson should have been perpetrated at Louvain because the civil population fired on your soldiers; but an inquiry made together with the representatives of the United States (whom you deign to consider sufficiently to ask them to represent your defenses) proved that the civil population was unarmed. If you today approve of the burning of the Louvain Library, have you until now approved of the destruction of the library at Alexandria? It is true there was no Deutsch Kultur there. The result of German culture as regards military matters is to place your soldiers on a stratum of civilization anterior to that of the Vandals, who, when taking Hippone, spared the library.
In Paris, if one of us passing, on Friday, Oct. 9, in the Rue d'Edimbourg, to an office of the Societe d'Economie Politique, situated at No. 14, had passed near to that address, he might have been murdered by a bomb thrown from one of your Taubes on the civil population of a town whose bombarding had not been notified. Another Taube caused, through the throwing of a bomb, a fire at the Cathedral of Notre Dame. You cannot, to excuse such an assault, invoke the pretext put forward to excuse the destruction of the Cathedral of Rheims. No observer could have caught sight of a German soldier from the top of the towers.
Barbarian Soldiery.
Your co-signatories and you express indignation because the civilized world describes your soldiers as barbarians. Do you therefore consider such deeds as those specified to be a high expression of civilization? And here is the dilemma: either you are in ignorance of these deeds, then you are indeed very careless, or you approve of them, in which case you must make the defense of them enter into your works on right and ethics. In doing so you would only be following the theories of your military authors who have insisted on the necessity of striking terror into the hearts of the civil population, in order that it may weigh on its Government and its army so strongly that they may be forced to ask for peace. But those of your colleagues who profess psychology must, if they have approved such a theory, confess today that they made a great mistake; for such deeds, far from forcing the people to cowardly action, awaken indignation in all hearts and fire the courage of our soldiers. Nevertheless, your military authors have not stated that theft was a means of assuring victory. And yet the Crown Prince, your Emperor of tomorrow, gathered together at the castle of the Count of Baye articles in precious metals, belonging to a collection, which he had carefully packed up and sent off. Some of your officers' trunks have been found stuffed with goods which would constitute the stock of a second-hand clothes seller. Do you and your co-signatories include in German science and art the science and art of housebreaking? Are the law professors and the economists willing to defend such a manner of acquiring property? And, if so, what becomes of your penal code?
You and your co-signatories affirm that the present struggle is directed against "German culture." If such culture teaches that the rights of men include contempt of treaties, contempt of private property, contempt of the lives of non-combatants, you cannot be surprised that the other nations show no desire to preserve it for your benefit and their detriment.
It is not by arms but by arguments and facts that economists like us, faithful to the teachings of the physiocrats and of Adam Smith, have sought to protect ourselves against it. On the eve of the war, at the inauguration of Turgot's Monument, we set forth his ideas of liberty and humanity in opposition to the German realpolitik. We hope that the present events will cure those among our professors whom it had contaminated, and that they will cease to constitute themselves accomplices of that, form of Pan-Germanism which they introduced to public opinion and to our legislation. The acts of your diplomatists and of your Generals, and the approbation given them by you and other representatives of German science, are a terrible demonstration, but conclusive, of the dangers and vanity of German culture. You are its true destroyers.
Militarism and Civilization.
"Without our miltarism," say you, "our civilization would have been annihilated long ago." And you invoke the inheritance of Goethe, Beethoven, Kant. But Goethe, born in the free city of Frankfort, lived at the Court of Charles Augustus, which was a liberal and artistic centre ever threatened by Prussia. But Beethoven was of Flemish origin, and lived in Holland until the age of twenty-four, spending the rest of his life in Vienna, and he has nothing in common with Prussian militarism, so redoubtable for Austria. But Kant, if he was born and lived at Könisberg, the true capital of the Prussian Kingdom, welcomed the French Revolution, and when he died in 1804 it was not Prussian militarism which had recommended his writings to the world.
But the solidarity which you establish between German militarism and German culture, of which you and your colleagues claim to be the representatives, is a proof of the confusion of German conceptions.
To present Goethe, Beethoven, and Kant to the world you surround them with bayonets. In the same manner every tradesman and every merchant throughout Germany has got into the habit of saying: "I have four million bayonets behind me!" Your Emperor said to some tradesmen who complained of bad business: "I must travel!" And he went to Constantinople; he went to Tangier, after the speech at Bremen. In every one of his words, in each of his gestures, he affirmed the subordination of economic civilization to military civilization. He considered that it was his duty to open up markets and assert the value of German products with cannon and sword. Hence his formidable armaments, his perpetual threats which held all nations in a constant state of anxiety.
There is the deep and true cause of the war. And it is due entirely to your Emperor and his environment. We readily understand that the greater number of "representatives of German science and art" who signed the appeal are incapable of fathoming this fact; but this is not your case, you who denounced the abuses and consequences of German protectionism, and we remember that at the Antwerp Congress you agreed with us in recognizing its aggressive nature.
In conclusion, we beg to express the deep consideration which we feel for your science, hitherto so unerring.
To Americans In Germany
By Prof. Adolf von Harnack.
Citizens of the United States, ladies and gentlemen: It is my pleasure and my privilege to address to you today a few words.
Let me begin with a personal recollection. Ten years ago I was in the United States and I came away with some unforgettable memories. What impression was the strongest? Not the thundering fall of Niagara, not the wonderful entrance into New York Harbor with its skyscrapers, not the tremendous World's Fair of St. Louis in all its proud grandeur, not the splendid universities of Harvard and Columbia or the Congressional Library in Washington—these are all works of technique or of nature and cannot arouse our deepest admiration and make the deepest impression. What was the deepest impression? It was two-fold: first, the great work of the American Nation, and next, American hospitality.
The great work of the American Nation, that is, the nation itself! From the smallest beginning the American Nation has in 200 years developed itself to a world power of more than 100,000,000 souls, and has not only settled but civilized the whole section of the world from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the great lakes to the West Indies. And not only civilized: everything which has drifted to it has been welded together by this nation with an indescribable power, welded together to the unity of a great, noble nation of educated men—such a thing as has never before happened in all history. After two or at the most, three generations, all are welded together in the American body and the American spirit, and this without petty rules, without political pressure. In the definite frame of this people every individual character fits in without coercion, becomes American and yet retains its own quality. The world has never witnessed such a spectacle but it is witnessing it continually now. On the one side it hears and sees the fact that every alien after a short time announces, "America is now my Fatherland!" and on the other hand the old country still continues undisturbed the bond between them. Yes, here is at once a national strength and freedom which another could not copy from you very easily.
The Spirit of America.
But, further: Among those who have wandered to your shores are millions of Germans—several millions! For more than two years—where shall I begin to relate—since the days of Steuben and of Carl Schurz—but how can I name names?—they have been all received as brothers, bringing their best; and their best was not lost. More I cannot say.
Furthermore, what sort was the spirit which received them? Upon each one, without and within, that spirit has imprinted its seal. Concerning this spirit I shall speak later, but for the present I will only say, it is the spirit of common courage and common freedom! And from this unity I saw had developed a tremendous contribution as the work of this nation, a contribution to agriculture, to technology, and, as we of the German universities have known for several decades, an extraordinary contribution to science. And this contribution has been derived from a combination such as we in Europe cannot effect, of the good old traditional wisdom which has been brought down out of the history of Europe and a youthful courage, I might almost say, a childlike spirit. These two combined, this circumspection and at the same time this courage of youth, which I met everywhere and which has stamped itself upon all American work, is what I have admired.
And the second was the American hospitality!
Like a warm breeze, this hospitality surrounded me and my friends. Wherever we went we breathed the air of this friendship, indeed, it almost took away our powers of will, so thoroughly did it anticipate every plan and every need. Like parcels of friendship, we were sent from place to place, always the feeling that we had all known each other forever. That was an experience for which all of us—for who of us Germans who have come over here has not experienced it?—will be perpetually thankful. That will never be forgotten.
Friendship for Germany.
But beautiful and noble as that was, your nation has furnished ours with something still more unforgettable. In those horrible days of 1870, when a great number of Germans were shut up in unfortunate Paris, the American Ambassador assumed the care of them, and what America did at that time she is again doing for all of our country—men who, surprised in the enemy's country by the war, have been detained there. They are intrusted to the special care of the American Ambassador, and we know with as much certainty as though it were an actual fact already that that care will be the best and the most loyal. That, my friends, is true service of friendship, which is not mere convention but such as it is in the Catechism: "Give us our daily bread and good friends." They belong together.
But to answer the question why you are our good friends we must reflect a little for the answer which we might have given a few days ago—"You are our good friends as our blood relations"—alas! that answer no longer holds. That is over! God grant that in later days we may again be able to say it, but by a circumstance which has torn our very heartstrings it has been proved that blood is not thicker than water. But where then is the deep-lying reason for this friendship? Does it rest in the fact that we have so many Germans over there; that they have been received so cordially; that they have done so much for the building up of America, soul and body, or that we find friends in so many Americans on this side of the water? This is an important consideration, but it is not the ultimate cause we are seeking.
My friends, when it is a powerful relationship, imbedded in rock as it were, which is under consideration, then the matter is more than superficial, and that which is at the bottom of this deeper fact, history is at this very moment showing us as she writes in characters of bronze before our eyes; because we have a common spirit which springs from the very depths of our hearts, for that reason are we friends!
And what is that spirit? It is the spirit of the deep religious and moral culture which has possessed us through a succession of centuries and out of which this powerful American offshoot has sprung. To this culture belong three things, or, rather, it rests upon three pillars. The first pillar is the recognition of the eternal value of every human soul, consequently the recognition of personality and individuality. These are respected, nourished, striven for. Second is the recognition of the duty at any time to risk this human soul, which is to each one of us so dear, for that great ideal—"God, freedom, and the Fatherland." The dearer that human soul, that life, is prized by us, Germans and Americans, the more surely do we give it up willingly and joyously when a high cause demands it. And the third pillar is respect for law and therewith the capability for powerful organization in all lines and in all manner of communities.
A Different Culture.
But now before my eyes I see rising up against the culture which rests upon these three pillars—personality, duty to sacrifice all for ideals, law and organization—another culture, a culture of the horde whose Government is patriarchal, a civilization of the mob which is brought together and held together by despots, the Byzantine—I must extend it further—Mongolian-Muscovite culture.
My friends, this was once a true culture, but it is no longer. This culture was not able to bear the light of the eighteenth century, still less that of the nineteenth, and now, in this twentieth century, it breaks out and threatens us—this unorganized mob, this mob of Asia; like the sands of the desert it would sweep down over our harvest fields. That we already know; we are already experiencing it. That, too, the Americans know, for every one who has stood upon the ground of our civilization and who with a keen glance regards the present situation knows that the word must be: "Peoples of Europe, save your most hallowed possessions!"
"I Cover My Head!"
This, our culture, the chief treasure of mankind, was in large part, yes, almost wholly, intrusted to three peoples: to us, to the Americans, and—to the English. I will say no more! I cover my head! Two still remain, and must stand all the more firmly together where this culture is menaced. It is a question of our spiritual existence, and Americans will realize that it is also their existence. We have a common culture, and a common duty to protect it!
To you, American citizens, we give the holy pledge that we shall offer our last drop of blood in the cause of this culture. May I in addition say to you, since I have made this pledge, that we shall as a matter of course protect those of you here in our land and care for you and do everything for you? If we have made the greater pledge, surely we can manage these trifles.
But you, my dear fellow-countrymen, we are all thinking with one mind on what is now going on about us. It is a very grave but a splendid time. Whatever in the last analysis we shall go through, at present there is no longer any one of us who any longer regards life in the rôle of a blasé or critical spectator, but each one of us stands in the very midst of life, and, indeed, in the very midst of a higher life. God has of a sudden brought us out of the wretchedness of the day to a high place to which we have never before spiritually attained. But always where life emerges, a higher life or merely life itself, wherever there is a thirst for life, there is it set close around by death, as at every birth when something new comes to the light of day, and so if the most precious thing is to be gained, then death will stand close by life. But this we also know, that when death and life intertwine in this fashion, the fear of death vanishes away; in the intertwining, life only appears and full of life man goes through death and into death. It brings to my mind an old song, the powerful song of victory of our fathers:
It was a famous battle,
Fought 'twixt Life and Death;
Life came out the victor,
Triumphant over Death;
Already it was written
How one Death killed the other,
So making mock of Death!
Death which is willingly met kills the great death and secures the higher life. Death makes us free. Thus spake Luther.
Let me say a few words in closing. Before all of us there stands in time of crisis an image under which are the plain words: "He was faithful unto death, yea, even to death on the cross." Now the time for great faithfulness has come for us, for this obedience for which our neighbors in former times have ridiculed us, saying: "See, these are the faithful Germans, the men who do all on command and are so obedient!" Now they shall see that this great obedience was not mere discipline, but a matter of will. It was and still is discipline, but it is also will. They shall see that this great obedience is not pettiness and death, but power and life.
From the east—I say it once more—the desert sands are sweeping down upon us; on the west we are opposed by old enemies and treacherous friends. When will the German be able to pray again, confessing:
God is the Orient,
God is the Occident;
Northernmost and Southern lands
Rest in peace beneath His hands.
We shall hope that God may give us strength to make this true, not only for us but for all Europe.
Until then, since we see the very springs of our higher life and our existence threatened, we shout: "Father, protect our springs of life and save us from the Huns."
A Reply to Prof. Harnack
By Some British Theologians.
Prof. Harnack.
Honored Sir: We, the undersigned, a group of theologians who owe more than we can express to you personally and to the great host of German teachers and leaders of thought, have noticed with pain a report of a speech recently delivered by you, in which you are said to have described the conduct of Great Britain in the present war as that of a traitor to civilization.
We are quite sure that you could never have been betrayed into such a statement if you had been acquainted with the real motives which actuate the British Nation in the present crisis.
Permit us, in the interests of a better understanding now and subsequently, to state to you the grounds on which we, whose obligations to Germany, personal and professional, are simply incalculable, have felt it our duty to support the British Government in its declaration of war against the land and people we love so well.
We are not actuated by any preference for France over Germany—still less by any preference for Russia over Germany. The preference lies entirely the other way. Next to the peoples that speak the English tongue, there is no people in the world that stands so high in our affection and admiration as the people of Germany. Several of us have studied in German universities. Many of us have enjoyed warm personal friendship with your fellow-countrymen. All of us owe an immeasurable debt to German theology, philosophy, and literature. Our sympathies are in matters of the spirit so largely German that nothing but the very strongest reasons could ever lead us to contemplate the possibility of hostile relations between Great Britain and Germany.
Nor have we the remotest sympathy with any desire to isolate Germany, or to restrict her legitimate expansion, commercial and colonial. We have borne resolute witness against the endeavor made by foes of Germany to foment anti-German suspicion and ill-will in the minds of our fellow-countrymen.
The Sanctity of Treaties.
But we recognize that all hopes of settled peace between the nations, and indeed of any civilized relations between the nations, rest on the maintenance inviolate of the sanctity of treaty obligations. We can never hope to put law for war if solemn international compacts can be torn up at the will of any power involved. These obligations are felt by us to be the more stringently binding in the case of guaranteed neutrality. For the steady extension of neutralization appears to us to be one of the surest ways of the progressive elimination of war from the face of the earth. All these considerations take on a more imperative cogency when the treaty rights of a small people are threatened by a great world power. We therefore believe that when Germany refused to respect the neutrality of Belgium, which she herself had guaranteed, Great Britain had no option, either in international law or in Christian ethics, but to defend the people of Belgium. The Imperial Chancellor of Germany has himself admitted, on Aug. 4, that the protest of the Luxembourg and Belgian Governments was "just," and that Germany was doing "wrong" and acting "contrary to the dictates of international law." His only excuse was "necessity"—which recalls our Milton's phrase, "necessity, the tyrant's plea." It has cost us all the deepest pain to find the Germany which we love so intensely committing this act of lawless aggression on a weak people, and a Christian nation becoming a mere army with army ethics. We loathe war of any kind. A war with Germany cuts us to the very quick. But we sincerely believe that Great Britain in this conflict is fighting for conscience, justice, Europe, humanity, and lasting peace.
Dictated Terms.
This conviction is deepened by the antecedents of the present unhappy war. In allowing her ally Austria to dictate terms to Servia which were quite incompatible with the independence of that little State, Germany gave proof of her disregard for the rights of smaller States. A similar disregard for the sovereign rights of greater States was shown in the demand that Russia should demobilize her forces. It was quite open to Germany to have answered Russia's mobilization with a counter-mobilization without resorting to war. Many other nations have mobilized to defend their frontiers without declaring war. Alike indirectly in regard to Servia and directly in regard to Russia, Germany was indisputably the aggressor. And this policy of lawless aggression became more nakedly manifest in the invasion of Belgium. Great Britain is not bound by any treaty rights to defend either Servia or Russia. But she is bound by the most sacred obligations to defend Belgium, obligations which France undertook to observe. We have been grieved to the heart to see in the successive acts of German policy a disregard of the liberties of States, small or great, which is the very negation of civilization. It is not our country that has incurred the odium of being a traitor to civilization or to the conscience of humanity.
Doubtless you read the facts of the situation quite differently. You may think us entirely mistaken. But we desire to assure you, as fellow-Christians and fellow-theologians, that our motives are not open to the charge which has been made.
We have been moved to approach you on this matter by our deep reverence for you and our high appreciation of the great services you have rendered to Christendom in general. We trust that you will receive what we have said in the spirit in which it was sent.
We have the honor to be,
Yours very sincerely,
P.J. FORSYTH, M.A., D.D., Aberdeen University. Principal of Hackney College (Divinity School: University of London).
HERBERT T. ANDREWS, B.A. Oxon. Professor of New Testament, Exegesis, Introduction and Criticism. New College, London (Divinity School: University of London).
J. HERBERT DARLOW, M.A. Cambridge. Literary Superintendent of the British and Foreign Bible Society.
JAMES R. GILLIES, M.A. Edinburgh, Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of England. Pastor of Hampstead Presbyterian Church, London.
R. MACLEOD, Pastor of Frognal Presbyterian Church, London.
W.M. MACPHAIL, M.A. Glasgow. General Secretary of the Presbyterian Church of England.
RICHARD ROBERTS, Pastor of Crouch Hill Presbyterian Church, London.
H.H. SCULLARD, M.A. Cambridge, M.A., D.D. London. Professor of Ecclesiastical History, Christian Ethics, and the History of Religions in New College (Divinity School: University of London).
ALEX RAMSAY, M.A., B.D. Pastor of the Highgate Presbyterian Church, London.
W.B. SELBIE, M.A., D.D. Principal of Mansfield College, Oxford. Chairman of the Congregational Union of England and Wales.
J. HERBERT STEAD, M.A. Glasgow. Warden of the Robert Browning Settlement, London.
Prof. Harnack in Rebuttal
BERLIN, Sept. 10, 1914.
Gentlemen: The words, "The conduct of Great Britain is that of a traitor to civilization," were not used by me, but you have expressed my general judgment of this conduct correctly. The sentence in question in my speech reads: "This, our culture, the chief treasure of mankind, was in large part, yes, almost wholly, intrusted to three peoples: To us, to the Americans, and—to the English, I will say no more. I cover my head." To my deep sorrow I must, even after your communication, maintain this judgment.
You claim that England has drawn and must draw the sword purely for the protection of the small nations of Servia and Belgium and for the sake of an international treaty. In this claim I see at the very least a fearful self-delusion.
It is an actual fact that what Servia desired was that her Government should in no wise be mixed up with the shameful crime of Serajevo, and it is also an established fact that for years Servia, with the support of Russia, has attempted by the most despicable means to incite to rebellion the Austrian South Slavs. When Austria finally issued to her a decided ultimatum without making any actual attack on her territory, it was the duty of every civilized land—England as well—to keep hands off, for Austria's royal house, Austria's honor, and Austria's existence were attacked. Austria's yielding to Servia would mean the sovereignty of Russia in the eastern half of the Balkans, for Servia is nothing more than a Russian satrapy, and the Balkan federation brought about by Russia had for its ultimate purpose opposition to Austria. This is as well known in England as in Germany. If, gentlemen, in spite of this, you can presume to judge that in this circumstance it was purely a case of protecting the right of a small nation against a large one, I shall find great difficulty in believing in your good faith.
Against Pan-Slavism.
It was not a question of little Servia but of Austria's battle for life and the struggle of Western culture against Pan-Slavism. Servia is, after all, only an outpost of Russia and as opposed to this nation, Servia's "sovereignty" is less than a mere shadow; in fact it can hardly be protected by England, for in reality it does not exist. For in addition Servia, through the most dastardly murder known to history, struck her name from the list of the nations with which one does business as equals. What would England have done had the Prince of Wales been assassinated by the emissary of a little nation which had continually been inciting the Irish to revolt? Would it have issued a milder ultimatum than Austria's? But of all this you say not a word in your communication, but instead persist on seeing in the situation into which Servia and Russia have brought Austria, only the necessity of an oppressed little country to whose help haste must be made! Thus to judge would be more than blindness, indeed, it would be a crime that cries unto heaven, were it not known that the life problems of other great powers do not exist for Great Britain, because she is only concerned about her own life problems and those of little nations whose support can be useful to her.
At bottom Servia is of as little consequence to you as to us. Austria, too, is of no consequence to you; and you realize that Austria had the right to punish Servia. But because Germany, who stands behind Austria, is to be struck; therefore Servia is the guiltless little State which must be spared! What is the result? Great Britain sides with Russia against Germany. What does that mean? That means that Great Britain has torn down the dike which has protected West Europe and its culture from the desert sands of the Asiatic barbarism of Russia and of Pan-Slavism. Now we Germans are forced to stop up the breach with our bodies. We shall do it amid streams of blood, and we shall hold out there. We must hold out, for we are protecting the labor of thousands of years for all of Europe, and for Great Britain! But that day when Great Britain tore down the dam will never be forgotten in the history of the world, and history's judgment shall read: On that day when Russian-Asiatic power rushed down upon the culture of Europe Great Britain declared that she must side with Russia because "the sovereignty of the murderer-nation Servia had been violated!"
As to Neutrality.
But no, the maintenance of Servians sovereignty is not according to your communication the first, but only the second reason for Great Britain's declaration of war against us. The first reason is our violation of Belgian neutrality; "Germany broke a treaty which she herself had guaranteed." Shall I remind you how Great Britain has disported herself in the matter of treaties and pleasant promises? How about Egypt for example? But I do not need to go into these flagrant and repeated violations of treaty rights, for a still more serious violation of the rights of a people stands today on your books against you; it has been proved that your army is making use of dumdum bullets and thereby turning a decent war into the most bloody butchery. In this Great Britain has severed herself from every right to complain about the violation of the rights of a people.
But aside from that—in your communication you have again emphasized the main point. We did not declare war against Belgium, but we declared that since Russia and France compelled us to wage a war with two fronts (190,000,000 against 68,000,000) we had then to suffer defeat if we could not march through Belgium; that we should do that but that we should carefully keep from harming Belgium in any way and would indemnify all damage incurred—our hand upon it! Would Great Britain, had she been in our position, have hesitated a moment to do likewise? And would Great Britain have drawn the sword for us if France had violated the neutrality of Belgium by marching through it? You know well enough that both these questions must be answered in the negative.
Our Imperial Chancellor has with his characteristic conscientiousness declared that we have on our side committed a certain wrong. I cannot agree with him in this judgment, and I cannot even recognize the commission of a formal wrong, for we were in a situation where formalities no longer obtain, and where moral duties only prevail. When David, in the extremity of his need, took the show-bread from the Table of the Lord, he was in every sense of the word justified, for the letter of the law ceased at that moment to exist. It is as well known to you as to me that there is a law of necessity which breaks iron asunder, to say nothing of treaties.
Appreciate our position! Prove to me that Germany has flippantly constructed a law of necessity; prove it to me in this hour, when your country has gone over to our enemies, and we have half the world to fight. You cannot do that; you could not do it on the 4th of August, and consequently you have assumed the most miserable of pretexts, because you wished to destroy us. From your letter, gentlemen, I must believe that you are far from holding this view; but do you believe, and would you really try to make me believe, that your statesmen would have declared war against us only because we were determined to march through Belgium? You could not consider them so foolish and so flippant.
An Earlier Treachery.
But I am not yet at an end. It is not we who have first violated the neutrality of Belgium. Belgium, as we feared and as we now, informed by the actual facts, see still more clearly, was for a long time in alliance with France and—with you. France's airmen were flying over Belgium before we marched in; negotiations with France had already taken place, and in Maubeuge there was found an arsenal full of English munitions which had been stationed there before the declaration of war. This arsenal—you know where Maubeuge is situated!—points to agreements which Great Britain had made with France, and to which Belgium was also party. These agreements are before the whole world today, for the chain of evidence is complete and the treacherous plot of Great Britain is revealed. She has encouraged and pledged the Belgians against us, and therefore it is she who must answer for all the misery which has been visited upon that poor country. Had it been our responsibility, not a single hair of a Belgian's head should have been harmed. If, then, the Belgian wrongs like those of Servia are only the flimsiest pretexts for Great Britain's declaration of war against us, there remains, unfortunately, no other reason for this declaration of war save the intention of your statesmen either to destroy us or so to weaken us that Great Britain will rule supreme on the seas and in all distant parts of the world. This intention you personally deny and thus far I must take your word for it. But do you deny it also for your Government? That you cannot do, for the facts have been brought to light; when Great Britain determined to join the coalition of Russia with France, which is ruled by Russia, when it put aside all the differences that stood between her and Russia, when it set upon us not only the hordes of Russia but the scrupulous Japanese, "the yellow peril," and called upon all Europe, when it also sunk in the ocean its duties to European culture—for all of that there is but one explanation: England believes that the hour for our destruction has struck. Why does she wish to destroy us? Because she will not endure our power, our zeal, our perfection of growth! There is no other explanation!
Lifting Humanity.
We and Great Britain in alliance with America were able in peaceful co-operation to lift humanity to a higher plane, and to lead the world in peace, allowing to each his rights. We Germans, now know no, and have never known any, higher ideal than this. In order to realize this ideal the German Kaiser and the German people have made many sacrifices in the past 43 years. In proportion to the development of our strength, we should be able to lay claim to more territory than we now possess in the world. But we have never attempted to force this claim. We held that the strength of our nation should be in its zeal and in the peaceful fruits of that zeal. Great Britain has begrudged us that; she has been jealous of our powers, jealous of our fleet, jealous of our industries and our commerce, and jealousy is the root of all evil. Jealousy it is which has driven Great Britain into the most fearful war which history knows and the end of which is unforseen.
What course is open to you, gentlemen, once you are enlightened as to the policy of your country? In the name of our Christian culture, which your Government has frivolously placed in jeopardy, I can offer you but one counsel: To burden your consciences no longer with Servia and Belgium, which you must protect, but to face about and stop your Government in its headlong course; it may not be too late. As far as we Germans are concerned, our way is clearly indicated, though not so our fate. Should we fall, which God and our strong arm prevent, then there sinks with us to its grave all the higher culture of our part of the world, whose defenders we were called to be; for neither with Russia nor against Russia will Great Britain be able longer to maintain that culture in Europe. Should we conquer—and victory is for us something more than mere hope—then shall we feel ourselves responsible, as formerly, for this culture, for the learning and the peace of Europe, and shall put from us any idea of setting up a hegemony in Europe. We shall stand by the one who, together in fraternal union with us, will create and maintain such a peaceful Europe.
For the continuation of your cordial attitude toward me I am personally grateful. I would not unnecessarily sever the bond which holds me to the upright Christians and the learning of your country, but at the present moment this bond has no value for me.
PROF. VON HARNACK.
P.S.—It is in your power now to wage a battle which would be of honor to you. As a fourth great power arrayed against Germany, the lying international press has raised itself up, flooded the world with lies about our splendid and upright army, and slandered everything that is German. We have been almost entirely cut off from any possibility of protecting ourselves against this "beast of the pit." Do not believe the lies, and spread abroad the truth about us. We are today no different than Carlyle pictured us to you. HARNACK.
The Causes of the War
By Theodore Niemeyer
Theodore Niemeyer, Kaiser Wilhelm Exchange Professor at Columbia University for 1914-15, and well-known Professor of Kiel University, has addressed the following letter to the editor of The New Yorker Staats-Zeitung.
KIEL, 14th August, 1914.
To the Editor of the New Yorker Staats-Zeitung:
Dear Sir: English papers publish a telegram from Mr. Andrew Carnegie, in which the view is expressed that the German Emperor, "in declining to take part In the peace conference proposed by Sir Edward Grey, an advocate of peace," proved unfaithful to that love of peace which he has shown during the past twenty-five years—that he, on the contrary, has taken up the rôle of a disturber of the peace of Europe.
To the best of my knowledge, the German press has only referred to this telegram with the simple remark that intelligence of the real state of affairs has evidently not yet reached the ears of the sender of the telegram.
This attitude of the German press is in conformity with its firm consciousness of the justice of its cause and its confidence in the ultimate triumph of truth. Both in this consciousness and in this confidence I will not be surpassed by any one, but to observe silence in the face of such accusations is beyond my power. To allow such a misconstruction to pass unchallenged through the world seems to me (and doubtless to many thousands besides me) unbearable.
The misunderstanding about the Peace Conference is easily put right. Sir Edward Grey did not propose any peace conference at all, but a conference of the Ambassadors of those four powers which were at that time not directly concerned, namely Germany, England, France, and Italy. These powers were to attempt to exert their influence on Austria-Hungary and Russia in the same way as the Ambassador's Conference (or rather Ambassadorial Reunion) in London had done, in 1912 and 1913, on the Balkan States and Turkey. What the united six powers at that time undertook toward the Balkan States was now to be done by four—discordant—powers upon two others who are in a state of highest political tension. To this proposal Germany replied that the apparatus of an Ambassadorial Conference does not work quickly or effectually enough for the emergency of the moment, or to be able to ease the tense political situation.
The Kaiser's Efforts.
In place of this, however, the German Emperor undertook to negotiate in person with the Russian and Austrian monarch and was overwhelmed with grief when the leaders of Muscovite policy frustrated all his exertions by completely ignoring his efforts for peace, (made at the express desire of the Czar,) and then in real earnest amassing Russian forces on the German frontier, evidently resolved to force on a war under any circumstances—even against the will of the Czar.
It is here that the clue to all the terrible events of the present day is to be found.
The incessant intriguing of the Russian military party for many years past has at last succeeded in drawing first France and then England to their cause, by turning the mistrust, the dread of competition, the hopes of revenge, and the ever-increasing armaments to their use with incomparable skill. The task was facilitated by Germany's industrial up-growth, which—in willful misconstruction of the truths of the laws of international communities—has been represented as a calamity for other States.
England's Growing Friendship.
In quite recent times people in England began to recognize this misconstruction of facts as such. They began to understand that friendship with Germany might be a blessing and that in this way peace would be possible. This, however, meant the possibility of the Muscovite policy being completely frustrated. An Anglo-German understanding seemed already to be shaking the very foundations of the Triple Entente. Russia had been obliged during the two Balkan wars (the London Ambassadorial Conference was in fact the clearing house for this) to make important concessions to the detriment of her protégés, Servia and Montenegro, in order to retain the friendship of England, which ardently strove for peace. Now, however, it was highest time for Russia to pocket her gains; for the English people were slowly beginning to realize that in St. Petersburg they were trying to engage England in the cause of Pan-Slavism. The unnatural alliance was becoming more and more unpopular from day to day. How long would it be before Russia lost England's help forever?
Before this took place Russia must bring about a European war. The iron, which had been prepared with the help of the English military party, had to be forged, for never again would there be a moment so favorable for the complete destruction of Austria and the humiliation of Germany. Servia was thrust to the front. Russia's Ambassador managed that wonderfully. The fire was set in so skillful a manner that the incendiaries knew in advance there was no possibility of extinguishing it. The conflagration must spread and soon blaze in all corners of Europe.
What was the use of a Peace Conference in such circumstances? Conscious of the irresistible consequences of their action the real rulers of Russia sent forward their armies; it was now or never, if the work was to be done with the help of England. And without England perhaps even France would not consent to join.
Thus it came about, and thus we have seen the peaceful policy of the German Emperor, which he has upheld for twenty-five years, completely wrecked.
We are now fighting not only for our Fatherland, but also for the emancipation of our culture from a menace that has become insupportable.
Yours faithfully,
TH. NIEMEYER,
Kaiser Wilhelm Professor, Columbia University.
Comment by Dr. Max Walter
To the letter addressed by Prof. Th. Niemeyer to the editor of The New Yorker Staats-Zeitung (see No. 237, 3, 2, of Frankfurter Zeitung) I should like to add the following remarks: During my activity as Professor of the Methodics of Foreign Language Teaching at Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, (January-June, 1911,) I was introduced to Mr. Andrew Carnegie, with whom I had a long interview. He expressed his views upon the peace question and arbitration, and spoke for a long time about the German Emperor who had repeatedly received him during his visits to Germany. He expressed his great appreciation of the important services rendered by our Emperor for the maintenance of peace, and declared that he, above all others, deserved the title of the Peace-loving Monarch, (Friedensfürst.) To him it was chiefly due that, during the various crises which had repeatedly brought Europe to the brink of war, the disaster had again and again been averted. The German Emperor, he considered, looked upon it as his chief pride that no war should take place during his reign, that Germany should develop and prosper in peaceful emulation with other countries, and his greatest desire was that other nations should recognize ungrudgingly that all Germany did to raise the moral and ethical standard of mankind was for the benefit of all.
If now Carnegie has really declared, as this letter maintains, that he considers the German Emperor the "Disturber of Peace," it shows clearly how baleful the influence of the English press has been—that it could shake such a firm conviction in our Emperor's love of peace. Let us hope that this letter of Prof. Niemeyer's and other explanations to the same effect will induce him to recognize the horrible misrepresentations of English papers and to return to his former conviction.
It was on this occasion, too, that Andrew Carnegie indorsed Prof. Burgess's view, that the three nations—America, Germany, and England—should unite, and then they would be able to keep the peace of the world. When I expressed my doubts in the real friendship of England, he replied, then America and Germany, at least, must hold together to secure universal peace. Hitherto I have refrained from publishing this interview, but now I consider it my duty to make known the views that Carnegie once held, and to which, if he has really changed them, we may hope he, who has done so much in his noble striving after peace, will return right away.
If there should remain the least doubt in Mr. Andrew Carnegie's mind, he has only to read the telegrams exchanged between the Emperor William and the Czar on the one hand, and King George and the Emperor on the other.