Knowing nothing of military expediency, I yet believe that, for the moral effect upon the world and for our own position, when the time for making peace comes it would be better for us, rather than the securing of our own soil against attack or invasion, that an American flag should wave over American troops in Flanders; that a Texas cow-puncher should lead a forlorn hope in France; that a Connecticut clockmaker should invent a device which will blunt the fangs of that stinging adder of the sea, the U-boat, and—who knows?—perhaps scotch the poison snake altogether.
Maybe it is true that, in our mistaken forbearance, we have failed and come short. Maybe we have endured too long and too patiently; we can atone for all that. But——
Without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins.
IX
I am coming now to what seems to me to be the most important consideration of all. In this war upon which we have entered our chief enemy is a nation firmly committed to the belief that whatever it may do is most agreeable in the sight of God. It is firmly committed to the belief that the acts of its Kaiser, its Crown Prince, its government, its statesmen, its generals and its armies are done in accordance with the will and the purposes of God. And, by the same token, it is committed, with equal firmness, to the conviction that the designs and the deeds of all the nations and all the peoples opposed to their nation must perforce be obnoxious to God. By the processes of their own peculiar theology—a theology which blossomed and began to bear its fruit after the war started, but for which the seed had been sown long before—God is not Our God but Their God. He is not the common creator of mankind, but a special Creator of Teutons. He is a German God. For you to say this would sound in American ears like sacrilege. For me to write it down here smacks of blasphemy and impiety. But to the German—in Germany—it is sound religion, founded upon the Gospels and the Creed, proven in the Scriptures, abundantly justified in the performances and the intentions of an anointed and a sanctified few millions among all the unnumbered millions who breed upon the earth.
Now here, by way of a beginning, is the proof of it. This proof is to be found in a collection of original poems published by a German pastor, the Reverend Herr Doktor Konsistorialrat D. Vorwerk. In the first edition of his book there occurred a paraphrase of the Lord's Prayer, of which the following are the last three petitions and the close:
"Though the warrior's bread be scanty, do Thou work daily death and tenfold woe unto the enemy. Forgive in merciful long-suffering each bullet and each blow which misses its mark! Lead us not into the temptation of letting our wrath be too tame in carrying out Thy divine judgment! Deliver us and our Ally from the infernal Enemy and his servants on earth. Thine is the kingdom, The German Land; may we, by aid of Thy steel-clad hand, achieve the power and the glory."
From subsequent editions of the work of Pastor Vorwerk this prayer was omitted. It is said to have been denounced as blasphemous by a religious journal, published in Germany—but not in Berlin. But evidently no one within the German Empire, either in authority or out of it, found any fault with the worthy pastor's sentiment that the Germans, above all other races—except possibly the Turks, who appear to have been taken into the Heavenly fold by a special dispensation—are particularly favoured and endowed of God, and enjoy His extraordinary—one might almost be tempted to say His private—guardianship, love and care. For in varying forms this fetishism is expressed in scores of places. Consider this example, which cannot have lost much of its original force in translation:
"How can it be that Germany is surrounded by nothing but enemies and has not a single friend? Is not this Germany's own fault? No! Do you not know that Prince of Hades, whose name is Envy, and who unites scoundrels and sunders heroes? Let us, therefore, rejoice that Envy has thus risen up against us; it only shows that God has exalted and richly blessed us. Think of Him who was hanged on the Cross and seemed forsaken of God, and had to tread in such loneliness His path to victory! My German people, even if thy road be strewn with thorns and beset by enemies, press onward, filled with defiance and confidence. The heavenly ladder is still standing. Thou and thy God, ye are the majority!"