Consider how strangely the Pan-German scheme has degraded Germany's university professors. The glory of every great city and land is its scholars, with their love of truth, and their stainless lives. We have had our civilization at the hands of men who loved the truth supremely, pursued the truth eternally, and cherished the truth above their fear of hell or hope of heaven. The world has its liberty, its science and its law at the hands of the heroes who preferred the truth above life. Concerning the patriots, the reformers and the statesmen, we can only say they were stoned, they were sawn asunder, they were crucified in Jerusalem, poisoned in Athens, tortured in Ephesus, exiled in Florence, burned at the stake in Oxford, assassinated in London. But the iron autocracy and militarism of Germany made cowards of her university men. An address has been issued to the civilized world, signed by ninety-odd German professors. They receive their salaries from State endowments. Any hour the Kaiser or the Chancellor can cut off their income. When the indignation of the civilized world flamed out against Germany because of the rape of Belgium, the German Government asked these professors to sign a document, and so degraded were these men through the German philosophy of militarism and autocracy, that they obeyed—losing their souls to save their salary. And consider what they signed!
Moral Cowardice of Scholars
By royal command these ninety-three professors signed a statement saying: "It is not true that we wronged Belgium." In the Kaiser's address that he himself published, we read, "Give no quarter, take no prisoners"; he adds, "Let all who fall into your hands be at your mercy; make yourself as terrible as the Huns." This address was circulated on millions of letter cards all over Germany. Realizing the mistake made by the Kaiser these professors signed a statement saying: "It is not true that our soldiers ever injured the life of a single Belgian." Socrates, Savonarola or Lincoln would have died a thousand deaths upon the rack, rather than have consented to sign their names to a lie, but the Kaiser and the Chancellor had only to command their servants to lie, and they lied like slaves. It makes the university professor ashamed of the German teachers. Think of Harnack and Eucken, with their moral cowardice and their intellectual subserviency. Plainly that is what Nietzsche meant when he said (page 134, "Ecce Homo"), "Every crime against culture that has been committed for a hundred years rests upon Germany."
Germany Organizes a Plan to Exterminate Conscience
When her Kaiser and Germany's War Staff had determined to do evil, to become world conquerors, and prepared a philosophy that would justify the crimes necessary to win the goal, Germany then began to get rid of any vestige of conscience that survived from the faith of Martin Luther. It was not enough to control the philosophers and scholars, it became necessary to popularize the new license to lawlessness, lust and theft. Unfortunately, Germany was complicated by her treaties with other nations as to the conduct of war. These treaties were a thousand times more sacred than contracts of the merchant for a note at his bank. Germany had solemnly covenanted to attack only armies, and to safeguard and protect hospitals, schools, churches, with the life and property of non-combatants. The Christian religion, also, as presented by the German Luther, taught obligations involved in the Ten Commandments. The new system of militarism, therefore, could enter the mind of the German soldier only when the old ideas of the Ten Commandments, duty, God, and the obligations to the weak, as taught by Jesus, had been cast out. One of the crimes proscribed by civilized states is the crime of teaching other men to do wickedness. But the German Kaiser and War Staff have so far lost their souls that they have deliberately written a text-book teaching men murder as a science.
Finally Germany Enthroned Cruelty Instead of Christ's Law of Pity
Having substituted the Prussian theory of the State for Christianity, having replaced the eternal God with the word Force, spelt with a capital "F," having gotten the Devil all mixed up with God, until the Kaiser planned Devil deeds and signed God's name to them, finally Germany decided to slay humanitarianism, pity, sympathy, and regard for the poor and weak. Nineteen centuries ago Jesus taught men that God by His dear Son had identified Himself with the poor and the weak. Taking a little child, Jesus said, "Take heed that ye offend not one of my little ones." Christianity is kindness, and pity. Out of Christ's teachings came the world's hospitals, the emancipation of slaves, homes for the aged and the invalid, schools for orphans, hospitals for the sick. Jesus' sympathy has journeyed like an angel of God across the fields of the world, and God's sweet mercy has fallen like rain from His heaven to cool men's fevered souls. Just in proportion as men have gone towards God, they have gone towards pity and compassion. Florence Nightingale and Augusta Stanley enter the smitten hospitals of the Crimea; Mother Bickerdyke and all her associates are found on the battle-fields of our Civil War; John Howard organizes the Prison Relief movement. Everywhere society climbs upward upon the golden rounds of sympathy, and philanthropy.
But Germany despises kindness. She now bombs hospitals, sinks passenger ships, and the malignancy of her cruelties has horrified savages in the South Sea Islands. Over against the teachings of Jesus therefore put the German frightfulness. Read the article by that American physician, who left Germany last summer by way of Switzerland. Note that when a train of English soldiers passed through the town, a train loaded with prisoners packed in freight cars, without sanitation, wounded men who had been without food or drink for three days, men who, with black lips, begged the German women for water, that these women held water just out of reach of these English soldiers, and then spilling it on the ground, spat in the faces of these wounded men!
When Germans were marching into a Belgian village, a German captain ordered the villagers to go into the church. The houses were then searched. Unfortunately no weapons were found, and therefore there was no excuse for looting the town and then burning the buildings. The diary of a German soldier says that his captain showed him a window opening into the cellar of a Belgian house, and told him to put a gun in through the window. A few minutes later the captain "discovered" the gun, and taking the weapon into the church told all the villagers that concealed weapons had been found, and they must all be shot and the village destroyed. The German burglar's life was sacred, but the honest householder's life and that of his family were as nothing, losing all rights because the German burglar has broken open the door.