RICHARD WILLSTAETTER, Professor of Chemistry, Berlin.
WILHELM WINDELBAND, Professor of Philosophy, Heidelberg.
WILHELM WUNDT, Professor of Philosophy, Leipsic,
Appeal of the German Universities
The campaign of systematic lies and slander which has been carried on against the German people and empire for years has since the outbreak of the war surpassed everything with which one might have credited even the most unscrupulous press. To repudiate any charges raised against our Kaiser and his Government rests with the authorities in question. They have done so, and their defense is substantiated by striking proofs. He who wants to know the truth can learn it, and we trust that truth will prevail. But if we are to look on, when our enemies, guided by envy and malice, are shameless enough to charge our army and with it our whole nation with barbarous atrocities and senseless vandalism, and when their statements appear to be believed, to a certain extent, among neutrals and in places which, at other times, were well disposed toward us; if we are quietly to look on when all this happens, we, the appointed trustees of culture and education in our Fatherland, feel in duty bound to break the reserve which our calling and position impose on us with a strong expression of protest. Hence we now appeal to the learned bodies with whom we hitherto worked in common in the interests of the highest ideals of the human race and with whom, even at this time, when hatred and passion rule the world and confuse the minds of men, we hope to remain of the same mind, in the same service of truth. We appeal to them in the confident belief that our voice will find hearing, and that the expression of our honest indignation will meet with credence. Moreover, we appeal to the love of truth and to the sense of justice of the many thousands all over the world who, being welcome guests in our educational institutions, have taken part in the inheritance of German culture, and who thus have had an opportunity of watching and appreciating the German people in peaceful labor, their industry and uprightness, their sense of order and discipline, their reverence for intellectual work of every kind, and their profound love for sciences and arts. All of you who know that our army is no mercenary host but embraces the entire nation from first to last, that it is led by the country's best sons, and that, at this very hour, thousands from our midst, teachers as well as students, are shedding their life's blood as officers and soldiers on the battlefields of Russia and France; you who have seen and heard for yourselves in what spirit and with what success our youths are treated and taught, and that nothing is stamped upon their minds more deeply than reverence and admiration for artistic, scientific and technical creations of the human mind, no matter what country and nation brought them forth; we call upon you who know all this as witnesses, whether it can be true what our enemies report that the German Army is a horde of barbarians and a band of incendiaries who take pleasure in leveling defenseless cities to the ground and in destroying venerable monuments of history and art. If you wish to pay honor to the cause of truth you will be as firmly convinced as we are that German troops, wherever they had to do destructive work, could only have done so in the bitterness of defensive warfare. But we appeal to all those whom the slanderous reports of our enemies reach and who are not yet altogether blinded by passion, in the name of truth and justice, to shut their ears to such insults to the German people, and not allow themselves to be prejudiced by those who prove ever anew that they hope to be victorious by the instrumentality of lies. Now, if in this fearful war, in which our nation is compelled to fight not only for its power, but for its very existence and its entire civilization, the work of destruction should be greater than in former wars, and if many a precious achievement of culture falls to ruin, the responsibility for all this entirely rests with those who were not content with letting loose this ruthless war, nay, who did not even shrink from pressing murderous weapons upon a peaceful population for them to fall surreptitiously upon our troops who trusted in the observance of the military usages of all civilized peoples. They alone are the guilty authors of everything which happens here. Upon their heads the verdict of history will fall for the lasting injury which culture suffers.
September, 1914.
UNIVERSITIES.
Tuebingen, Berlin, Bonn, Breslau, Erlangen, Frankfurt, Freiburg, Giessen, Goettingen, Greifswald, Halle, Heidelberg, Jena, Kiel, Königsberg, Leipzig, Marburg, Muenchen, Münster, Rostock, Strassburg, Wuerzburg.