"All our dearly-bought victories in East and West will be of no avail if, at the conclusion of peace, we have not conquered and compelled England to accept our terms. There can never be justice or morality on earth, or keeping of treaties, or recognition of moral international obligations, till the power of the most faithless, hypocritical nation which ever existed, has been finally broken and lies prostrate on the ground. So long ago as 1829 Goethe said to Förster: 'In no land are there so many hypocrites and sanctimonious dissemblers as in England.'
"We must wait in patience and with confidence in our leaders for the final settlement which the future will bring. The men in our navy are burning to imitate the deeds of their comrades on land. Whenever an opportunity has arisen, they have shown themselves equal to the enemy. Our navy knows, and that is a consolation for the men during inactivity, that the lofty task of breaking England's power will fall to their share. The men know that the final purpose of this world war can only be attained with their help, they know what is before them, and that the enormous stake demands and deserves all they have to give.
"In this time of trial we can best help by waiting in patience. The fleet's turn will come; the fleet created by our Kaiser will fulfil its mission. Everyone of us recognizes that a well-thought-out plan is behind all this; even the enemy has premonitions of it.
"In regard to England's downfall there can, may, and must be only one opinion. It is the very highest mission of German Kultur. Our war, too, is a 'holy war.' For the first time England's despotic power is opposed by an enemy possessing power, intelligence and will."[[214]]
[!-- Note Anchor 214 --][Footnote 214: Ibid., p. 37 et seq.]
Another of the fundamental reasons for German hate must be sought in the different conceptions of life and its duties in the two nations. In its chief results this has found expression in two totally different beings. Professor Engel (Berlin) once wrote that from the cradle to the grave, the German is "on the line," or, in other words, the State directs his every action.
Probably it would be more correct to look upon the German State as a Teutonic Nirvana—with this distinction, that it is a negation of personal individuality, but at the same time a huge, collective positive. The individual German fulfils his life's mission by absorption into Nirvana and by having all his activities transformed in the collective whole for the benefit of the State. The will of the State is supreme; individuals exist in, through, and for, the whole. And, above all, the State's motto has been thoroughness and efficiency in every department of its manifold life; knowledge and power its aims.
Britain's development has been along other lines; the widest possible room has been left to the individual, and the ties binding him to the whole have been loose in the extreme. German discipline is replaced by British liberty, with its advantages to the individual and corresponding disadvantages for the State. Liberty implies the right to rise by honest endeavour, but does not exclude the possibility of a wilful surrender to slothful inactivity, e.g., the human flotsam and jetsam of British cities, the casual ward and similar institutions. These and other phenomena of life in our islands have aroused bitter contempt among Germans. Contempt has been succeeded by envy and hatred. Rightly or wrongly the German has argued that the people who prefer sport to knowledge, self-will to a sense of duty to the community, selfishness to sacrifice,[[215]] wire-pulling and patronage to efficiency—this people is no longer worthy of the first place among the nations. By right of merit, morality and efficient fitness—that place belongs to Germany.
[!-- Note Anchor 215 --][Footnote 215: An article by the present writer on "Some German Schools" in the Times Educational Supplement, October 5th, 1915, gives some faint idea of the unprecedented sacrifices made by German schools. During the war all classes of the population have voluntarily renounced a part of their earnings for war charities. In the Fränkischer Kurier for October 13th, 1915, the Burgomaster of Nuremberg announced that the voluntary reduction of salaries agreed to by the municipal officials of that city had resulted in 264,000 marks (£13,000) going to charitable funds. The author could cite dozens of similar instances, but it would interest him most of all to know whether any town in the British Isles can show a better record than Nuremberg, with a population of 350,000.]
Unfortunately the present war has brought many proofs that there is no small amount of truth in this indictment, and most unfortunate of all, neutral countries too accept Germany's version that Britain is unorganized, self-interested, inefficient and effete. And to just the same degree they are convinced that Germany is thorough. They love Britain's humanitarian idea, but admire German efficiency—although they fear the latter's militarism.