A scrap of paper

by Emile Joseph Dillon

In this new faith ethics play no part. The furtherance of the German cause takes precedence of every law, divine and human. It is the one rule of right living. Whatever is done for Germany or for the German army abroad or at home, be it a misdemeanour or a crime in the eyes of other peoples, is well done and meritorious. A young midshipman, going home at night in a state of semi-intoxication, slays a civilian because he imagines—and, as it turns out, mistakenly imagines—that he has been slighted, and feels bound in duty to vindicate the honour of the Kaiser’s navy. He is applauded, not punished. Soldiers sabre laughing civilians in the street for the honour of the Kaiser’s uniform, and in lieu of chastisement they receive public approbation. Abroad, Germans of position—German residents in Antwerp offered a recent example—worm themselves into the confidence of the authorities, learn their secrets, offer them “friendly” advice, and secretly communicate everything of military importance which they discover to their Government, which secretly subsidizes them, and betray the trusting people whose hospitality and friendship they have so long enjoyed. Their conduct is patriotic. The press deliberately concocts news, spreads it throughout the world, systematically poisoning the wells of truth, and then vilifies the base hypocrisy of the British, who contradict it. That is part of the work of furthering the good cause of civilization. Tampering with State documents and forging State papers are recognized expedients which are wholly justified by the German “necessity which knows no law.” We have had enlightening examples of them since the war broke out. Prince Bismarck availed himself of this cultural privilege when he altered the Kaiser’s despatch in order to precipitate a collision with France. And the verdict of the nation was “Well done, thou good and faithful servant, who hast made such patriotic use of the maxim that the end, when it is Germany’s cause, justifies the means and hallows the act.” Since his day the practice has been reduced to a system.

With such principles illustrated by such examples, how could the present Imperial Chancellor regard a mere parchment treaty that lay across the road of his country’s army other than as a mere scrap of paper?

That was a logical corollary of the root-principle of Pan-Germanism. Germany’s necessity, of which her own Kaiser, statesmen, diplomatists, and generals are the best judges, knows no law. Every treaty, every obligation, every duty has to vanish before it: the Treaty of Bucharest, establishing equilibrium in the Balkans, as well as the Treaty of 1839, safeguarding the neutrality of Belgium. Hence nobody conversant with the nature, growth, and spread of this new militant race-worship was in the least surprised at the Chancellor’s contempt for the scrap of paper and for the simple-minded statesmen who proclaimed its binding force. I certainly was not. Experience had familiarized me with these German doctrines and practices; and although my experience was more constant and striking than that of our public men who had spent most of their lives in Great Britain, they, too, had had tokens enough of the new ethics which Prussia had imported into her international policy to put them on their guard against what was coming. But nobody is so blind as he who will not see.

Pan-Germanism, then, is become a racial religion, and to historical and other sciences has been confided the task of demonstrating its truth. But if curiosity prompts us to inquire to what race its military apostles, the Prussians, belong, and to interrogate history and philology on the subject, we find that they are not Germans at all. This fact appears to have escaped notice here. The Prussians are members of a race which in the ethnic groups of European Aryans occupy a place midway between the Slavs and the Teutons. Their next-of-kin are the Lithuanians and the Letts. The characteristic traits of the old Prussians, the surviving fragments of whose language I was once obliged to study, are brutal arrogance towards those under them, and cringing servility towards their superiors. One has but to turn to the political history of the race to gather abundant illustrations of these distinctive marks. To the submissiveness of the masses is to be attributed the ease with which the leaders of the nation drilled it into a vast fighting machine, whose members often and suddenly changed sides without murmur or criticism at the bidding of their chief. And it was with this redoubtable weapon that the Hohenzollern dynasty, which itself is German, won for the State over which it presided territory and renown. This done, and done thoroughly, it was Prussia who experimented upon all Germany in the way in which the Hohenzollerns had experimented on Prussia; and being supported by the literary, artistic, and scientific elements of the German people, succeeded thus far, and might have ended by realizing their ambitious dream, had it not been for the interposition of circumstance which misled them in their choice of opportunity.

Thus latter-day Germany furnishes a remarkable instance of the remoulding of a whole nation by a dynasty. For the people has, in truth, in some essential respects been born anew. The centre of its ethico-spiritual system has been shifted, and if it had a chance of gaining the upper hand Europe would be confronted with the most appalling danger that ever yet threatened. Morality, once cultivated by Germans with religious fervour, has become the handmaid of politics, truth is subservient to expediency, honour the menial of the regiment. Between the present and the past yawns an abyss. The country of Leibnitz, of Kant, of Herder, and of Goethe was marked off by fundamental differences from the Germany of to-day. The nation’s ideas have undergone since then an amazing transformation, which is only now unfolding itself in some of its concrete manifestations to the gaze of the easy-going politicians of this country. So, too, have the ethical principles by which the means of pursuing the ideals were formerly sifted and chosen. The place once occupied by a spiritual force, by the conscience of the nation and the individual, is now usurped by a tyrannical system devised by a military caste for a countless army. And this system has been idealized and popularized by visionaries and poets, professors, and even ministers of religion whose spiritual nature has been warped from childhood. To-day there is no counter-force in the land. Jesuitism, as the most virulent Calvinists depict it at its worst, was a salutary influence when compared with this monstrous product of savagery, attired in military uniform and the wrappages of civilization, and enlisted in the service of rank immorality.

What could afford our normally constituted people a clearer insight into the warped moral sense of the Prussianized German people than the remarkable appeal recently made by the “salt of the Fatherland,” German theologians and clergymen, to “Evangelical Christians abroad,” setting forth the true causes of the present iniquitous war?[1] These men of God preface their fervent appeal by announcing to Evangelical Christians the lamentable fact that “a systematic network of lies, controlling the international telegraph service, is endeavouring in other lands to cast upon our people and its Government the guilt for the outbreak of this war, and has dared to dispute the inner right of us and our Emperor to invoke the assistance of God.... Her ideal was peaceful work. She has contributed a worthy share to the cultural wealth of the modern world. She has not dreamed of depriving others of light and air. She desired to thrust no one from his place. In friendly competition with other peoples she has developed the gifts which God had given her. Her industry brought her rich fruit. She won also a modest share in the task of colonization in the primitive world, and was exerting herself to offer her contribution to the remoulding of Eastern Asia. She has left no one, who is willing to see the truth, in doubt as to her peaceful disposition. Only under the compulsion to repel a wanton attack has she now drawn the sword.”

These heralds of peace and Christian love appear to have been so immersed in their heavenly mission that they have not had time to peruse such unevangelical works as the writings of Treitschke, Clausewitz, Maurenbrecher, Nietzsche, Delbrück, Rohrbach, Schmoller, Bernhardi. And yet these are the evangelists of the present generation of Germans. Whether the innocence of the dove or the wisdom of the serpent is answerable for this failure of the Evangelical Germans to face the facts is immaterial. The main point is that first the German professors published their justification of this revolting crime against humanity; then came the anathema hurled against the allies by German authors, who pledged themselves never again to translate into the language of God’s chosen people the works of any French, English, or Russian man of letters; these were succeeded by the Socialists, who readily discovered chapter and verse in the Gospel of Marx for the catastrophic action of the Government they were wont to curse, and exhorted their Italian comrades to espouse the Kaiser’s cause against the allies; and now the rear of this solemn procession of the nation’s teachers is brought up by their spiritual guides and pastors, who publicly proclaim that their Divine Master may fully be implored to help his German worshippers to slay so many Russians, British, and French Christians that they may bring this war to an end by dictating the terms of peace, and firmly establishing the reign of militarism in Europe. That is the only meaning of the summary condemnation of those who have “dared to dispute the inner right of us and our Emperor to invoke the assistance of God.”

If this be Evangelical Christianity as taught in latter-day Germany, many Christians throughout the world, even among those who have scant sympathy with Rome, will turn with a feeling of relief to the decree of the new Pope enjoining prayers for the soldiers who are heroically risking their lives in the field, but forbidding the faithful to dictate to the Almighty the side to which he shall accord the final victory.

As historians, this body of divines have one eye bandaged, and read with the other only the trumped-up case for their own Kaiser and countrymen. They write:

“As our Government was exerting itself to localize the justifiable vengeance for an abominable royal murder, and to avoid the outbreak of war between two neighbouring Great Powers, one of them, whilst invoking the mediation of our Emperor, proceeded (in spite of its pledged word) to threaten our frontiers, and compelled us to protect our land from being ravaged by Asiatic barbarism. Then our adversaries were joined also by those who by blood and history and faith are our brothers, with whom we felt ourselves in the common world-task more closely bound than with almost any nation. Over against a world in arms we recognize clearly that we have to defend our existence, our individuality, our culture, and our honour.” From the theological standpoint, then, Germany is engaged in a purely defensive war against nations guilty of breaking their pledged word, and of wantonly attacking the peace-loving Teutons.