"If I live to be a hundred I shall never forget these days. They are the greatest in our history. We never dreamed that anything so overwhelming could be experienced on earth. Only three weeks ago and we should have been quite incapable of imagining its like. The feeling that we have experienced something overpowering, something which we cannot utter, overwhelms us all. We see it in each other's faces and feel it in the pressure of a hand. Words are too weak, so each is silent about what he feels. We are conscious of one thing alone: Germany's heart has appeared to us!
"At last we see each other as we are, and that is the indescribable something—the birth of this great time. Never have we been so earnest and never so glad. Every other thought, every other feeling has gone. What we have thought and felt before was all unreality, mere ghosts; day has dawned and they have fled. The whole land bristles with arms and every German heart is filled with trust. If we were always as we are to-day—one heart and one voice—then the whole world would have to bow before us. But we no longer knew ourselves, we had forgotten our real nature. We were so many and so divided, and each wanted only to be himself. How was it that such madness could have blinded us, and discord weakened us?
"Now we realize our strength and see what we can achieve, for in spite of all we have retained our integrity; we have suffered no injury to the soul. Germany's soul had slept awhile and now awakes like a giant refreshed, and we can hardly recollect what it was all like only three weeks ago, when each lived for himself, when we were at best only parties, not a people. Each knew not the other, because he knew not himself. In unholy egoism everyone had forgotten his highest will. Now each has found his true will again, and that is proved—for we have only one.
"In all German hearts flames the same holy wrath. A sacred wrath which sanctifies and heals. Every wound heals; we are again healthy and whole. Praise be to God for this war which delivered us on the first day from German quarrelsomeness! When the days of peace return we must prove that we deserve to have lived through this holy German war. Then no word must be spoken, no deed done on German soil which would be unworthy of these sublime days.
"Groups stand at the street corners reading the latest news. One counts aloud how many enemies we have: there are already six. A silence ensues, [ [!-- Note Anchor says --]till someone says: 'Many enemies, great honour, and we shall win, for our cause is just!' Such utterances can be heard every day. That is German faith; human might does not decide, but God's justice! That is the Supreme blessing of this great time; we put our trust in the spirit. Modern Germans have never breathed before so pure an atmosphere, for Germany's soul has appeared to us.
"I am going to pronounce a blessing on this war, the blessing which is on all lips, for we Germans, no matter in what part of the world we are, all bless, bless and bless again this world war. I do not intend to become lyrical. Lyric is so far from me that in all these three months I have not composed a single war poem. No, I shall endeavour to count up quite calmly, unlyrically, what we have seen during these three months: point for point, the whole list of surprises, for they have all been surprises, one after the other.
"Only a few days ago a high State official said to me: 'Let us confess at once that in all Europe nobody believed in this war; everybody had prepared for it, but nobody thought it possible—not even those who wanted war.'
"All thinking men considered that the interwoven economic dependence on each other among the nations, was so strong that none dare commit suicide by commencing a war. Thus we spoke to each other, and that seemed an axiom. Further, it seemed to be true that even if a madman let loose the dogs of war, then it would be all over in a fortnight. The man in the street imagined that it would be a kind of parade (Aufmarsch), a mobilization test, and the power which succeeded best would be the victor, for no country in the world was strong enough to stand the enormous cost for longer than three weeks.
"Now three months have gone, and we have stood the strain, and we can bear it for another three, six months, a year, or as many years as it must be. The calculation was wrong, all the calculations were wrong: the reality of this war surpasses everything which we had imagined, and it has been glorious to experience on so grand a scale that reality always surpasses the conception. Even that is not true which we learned in all the schools and read in all the books—that every war is an awful misfortune. Even this war is horrible; yes, but our salvation. It seems so to us, and so it has appeared to us from the very first day onwards.