As I was on the point of saying in my last letter, Jesus is never a watchword in Germany. The Nazarene meekness makes small appeal there. All is Gott. The Teuton regards Christ as too much of a weakling. Had He an army? Could He shoot, as all Germans can? He would not fight and therefore was properly destroyed. If His foolish ideas were followed, the weak would eventually rule the earth whereas, to the German mind, the strong should manifestly rule the earth. The strongest are the fittest, and the fittest should alone survive.
To the Goth the Christian religion and philosophy are baneful, baleful. As the result of their feeble policy was not Christ followed—the Germans claim—by the Dark Ages when mankind was obsessed by His superstitious worship? Lifting men out of this morass, the proper practical, scientific and warlike forces came at length into play and we have the magnificent modern régime whose basis is armed strength.
Hence—it is argued—Germany came into her own and inevitably leads the world. She represents the perfection of organized physical and mental powers which are the antitheses of the Christ ideal.
And so you never hear much in Deutschland about Peace and Good Will, Do as You would be Done by, Faith, Hope and Charity and the greatest of these is Charity. Such Christian texts and mottoes, which fill our American homes, churches and public places, are little in evidence in Germany because they do not enter into the life. The popular nomenclature is pagan rather than Biblical. Already in this war we behold the Kaiser drawing his names for forts and trenches from his wild pagan mythology, not from Christian sources. And in Deutschland, acts in the field count for so much more than words in the pulpit.
If the Huns win, Teuton hate will, of course, succeed Christian love as the human creed. Friendship, as we know it, will largely cease to exist. Friends will be those who can be cowed into truculence or bought. There will be no truth, justice, equity, in our meaning. Only the will or whim of the Emperor. His State Church, with its worship of Him, will grow as the church.
Everything that southern and western Europe stands for, from ancient Greece to the northern points of Scotland and Ireland (with America in addition)—beauty, loveableness, the brightness of life with its joyousness, gayety, grace, charm—will be stamped down under the metallic heels of the Kaiser's battalions and bureaucrats....
Boulogne, January, 1915.
After what I have written you from Germany, and since, about my unexpected disillusionment, you will ask me:
"Well, enough of this. What ought to be done or can be done about it?"