Thereupon the chemist-philosopher, who is also in his leisure hours a politician and a strategist, sketches in bold outline the picture of the victories of Germany and a remodeled Europe—a United States of Europe under the paternal sceptre of his mailed Kaiser: England crushed, France disarmed,[{113}] and Russia dismembered. His colleague Haeckel completes this joyous exposé by dividing Belgium, the British Empire, and the North of France—like Perrette of the fable before her pitcher broke. Unfortunately neither Haeckel nor Ostwald tells us if their plan for the establishment of this higher civilization included the destruction of the Halle of Ypres, of the Library at Louvain, of the Cathedral at Rheims. After all these conquests, divisions, and devastations, let us not overlook this wonderful sentence of which Ostwald certainly did not realize the sinister buffoonery, worthy of a Molière: "You know that I am a pacifist."
However far the high priests of a cult may allow their emotion to carry them, their profession of faith still retains a certain diplomatic reserve which does not hamper their followers. Thus the Kulturmenschen. But the zeal of their Levites must frequently disturb the serenity of Moses and Aaron—Haeckel and Ostwald—by its intemperate frankness. I do not know what they think of the article of Thomas Mann which appeared in the November number of the Neue Rundschau: "Gedanken im Kriege." But I do know what certain French intellectuals will think of it. Germany could not offer them a more terrible weapon against herself.[{114}]
In an access of delirious pride and exasperated fanaticism Mann employs his envenomed pen to justify the worst accusations that have been made against Germany. While an Ostwald endeavors to identify the cause of Kultur with that of civilization, Mann proclaims: "They have nothing in common. The present war is that of Kultur (i. e., of Germany) against civilization." And pushing this outrageous boast of pride to the point of madness, he defines civilization as Reason (Vernunft, Aufklärung), Gentleness (Sittigung, Sänftigung), Spirit (Geist, Auflösung), and Kultur as "a spiritual organization of the world" which does not exclude "bloody savagery." Kultur is "the sublimation of the demoniacal" (die Sublimierung des Dämonischen). It is "above morality, above reason, and above science." While Ostwald and Haeckel see in militarism merely an arm or instrument of which Kultur makes use to secure victory, Thomas Mann affirms that Kultur and Militarism are brothers—their ideal is the same, their aim the same, their principle the same. Their enemy is peace, is spirit ("Ja, der Geist ist zivil, ist bürgerlich"). He finally dares to inscribe on his own and his country's banner the words, "Law is the friend of the weak; it would reduce the world to a level. War brings out strength."[{115}]
| Das Gesetz ist der Freund des Schwachen, | |
| Möchte gern die Welt verflachen | |
| Aber der Krieg lässt die Kraft erscheinen.... |
In this criminal glorification of violence, Thomas Mann himself has been surpassed. Ostwald preached the victory of Kultur, if necessary by Force; Mann proved that Kultur is Force. Some one was needed to cast aside the last veil of reserve and say "Force alone. All else be silent." We have read extracts from the cynical article in which Maximilian Harden, treating the desperate efforts of his Government to excuse the violation of Belgian neutrality as feeble lies, dared to write:
"Why on earth all this fuss? Might creates our Right. Did a powerful man ever submit himself to the crazy pretensions or to the judgment of a band of weaklings?"
What a testimony to the madness into which German intelligence has been precipitated by pride and struggle, and to the moral anarchy of this Empire, whose organization is imposing only to the eyes of those who do not see farther than the façade! Who cannot see the weakness of a Government which gags its socialist press and yet tolerates such an insulting contradiction as this?[{116}] Who does not see that such words defame Germany before the whole world for centuries to come? These miserable intellectuals imagine that with their display of infuriated Nietzcheism and Bismarckism they are acting heroically and impressing the world. They merely disgust it. They wish to be believed. People are only too ready to believe them. The whole of Germany will be made responsible for the delirium of a few writers. Germany will one day realize she has had no more deadly enemy than her own intellectuals.
* * *
I write here without prejudice, for I am certainly not proud of our French intellectuals. The Idol of Race, or of Civilization, or of Latinity, which they so greatly abuse, does not satisfy me. I do not like any idol—not even that of Humanity. But at any rate those to which my country bows down are less dangerous. They are not aggressive, and, moreover, there remains even in the most fanatical of our intellectuals a basis of native common sense, of which the Germans of whom I have just spoken seem to have lost all trace. But it must be admitted that on neither side have they brought honor to the cause of reason, which they have not[{117}] been able to protect against the winds of violence and folly. There is a saying of Emerson's which is applicable to their failure:
"Nothing is more rare in any man than an act of his own."