The Reverend H. Francke is a pastor in the city of Liegnitz. From his pulpit he delivered a series of so-called war sermons, which afterward, at the request of the members of his flock, were printed in a book, the cover of which was ornamented with the Iron Cross. And we find the Reverend Francke adding his voice to the chorus thus:
"Germany is precisely—who would venture to deny it?—the representative of the highest morality, of the purest humanity, of the most chastened Christianity."
The Reverend Walter Lehmann, pastor at the town of Hamberge, in Holstein, went a trifle further. When he got out his book of war sermons he published it under the title About the German God; and therein, among other things, he said:
"This means that we go forth to war as Christians, precisely as Christians, as we Germans understand Christianity; it means that we have God on our side.... Can the Russians, the French, the Serbians, the English, say this? No; not one of them. Only we Germans can say it.... If God is for us who can be against us? It is enough for us to be a part of God.... A nation"—Germany—"which is God's seed corn for the future.... Germany is the centre of God's plans for the world.... That glorious feat of arms forty-four years ago"—the Battle of Sedan—"gives us courage to believe that the German soul is the world's soul; that God and Germany belong to one another."
These are the concluding words of the Reverend Lehmann's book About the German God:
"Oh, that the German God may permeate the world! Oh, that the eternal victory may blossom before the God of the German soul!"
It will not do to slight the Herr Pastor Job Rump, lic., Doctor, of Berlin. Hearken a moment to a word or two from one of Doctor Rump's published pamphlets:
"A corrupt world, fettered in monstrous sin, shall, by the will of God, be healed by the German nature.... Ye"—the Germans—"are the chosen generation, the royal priesthood, the holy nation, the peculiar people."
A learned and no doubt a pious professor, Herr G. Roethe, is credited with this modest claim:
"While other nations are born, ripen and grow old, the Germans alone possess the gift of rejuvenescence."