It will not be necessary to quote here the notorious "Hymn of Hate," by Ernst Lissauer, which was distributed by the Crown Prince of Bavaria to his army. Rather let us quote from some of the sermons and poems of German pastors and the religious press. In a collection of poems published by a German pastor, Konsistorialrat Dietrich Vorwerk, there occurred the following paraphrase of the Lord's Prayer: "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." Fortunately, this was deleted in the later editions of this book.
The published sermons of Pastor H. Francke are also typical:
"As Jesus was treated, so also have the German people been treated. From the East the Russian threatens us. Injustice and bloody deeds of violence are his life-element, agreements and constitutions, solemnly sworn to, have no significance for him; he is stained with blood from top to toe. Germany is precisely—who would venture to deny it?—the representative of the highest morality, of the purest humanity, of the most chastened Christianity. They envy us our freedom, our power to do our work in peace. To heal the world by the German nature is to become a blessing to the people of the earth. Wherever the German spirit obtains supremacy, there freedom prevails. Here we come upon the old intimate kinship between the essence of Christianity and of Germanism. Because of their close spiritual relationship, therefore, Christianity must find its fairest flower in the German mind. Therefore we have a right to say: 'Our German Christianity—the most perfect, the most pure.' Thus the Germans are the very nearest to the Lord. Is He the God of those others? No, they serve at best Satan, the father of lies."
The Rev. J. Rump writes in the same strain:
"Against us stands the world's greatest sham of a nation, the 'English cousin,' the Judas among the nations, who betrays Germanism for thirty pieces of silver. Against us stands sensual France, the harlot amongst the peoples. Against us stands Russia, inwardly rotten, mouldering, masking its disease under outbursts of brutality. Germany shall be the Israel of the future. The Germans are guiltless, and from all sides testimonies are flowing in as to the noble manner in which our troops conduct the war. We fight—thanks and praise be to God—for the cause of Jesus within mankind. Verily the Bible is our book. It was given and assigned to us, which proclaims to mankind salvation or disaster—according as we will it." [3]
Such quotations could be multiplied not only from German war sermons, but from some that have been preached in England and America as well.[4] The Archbishop of Canterbury says: "I get letters in which I am urged to see to it that we insist upon 'reprisals, swift, bloody and unrelenting. Let gutters run with German blood. Let us smash to pulp the German old men, women and children,' and so on." [5]
Here is Henri de Regnier's song of hate from France:
"I swear to cherish in my heart this hate
Till my last heart-throb wanes;
So may the sacred venom of my blood
Mingle and charge my veins!
May there pass never from my darkened brow
The furrows hate has worn!
May they plough deeper in my flesh, to mark
The outrage I have borne!
By towns in flames, by my fair fields laid waste,
By hostages undone,
By cries of murdered women and of babes,
By each dead warrior son, . . .