Chapter 1
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GEMS (?) OF GERMAN THOUGHT
COMPILED BY WILLIAM ARCHER
GARDEN CITY NEW YORK DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 1917
_Copyright, 1917, by_ DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
_All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian_
THOR'S HAMMER-CAST
Thor stood at the midnight end of the world, His battle-mace flew from his hand: "So far as my clangorous hammer I've hurled Mine are the sea and the land!" And onward hurtled the mighty sledge O'er the wide, wide earth, to fall At last on the Southland's furthest edge In token that His was all. Since then 'tis the joyous German right With the hammer lands to win. We mean to inherit world-wide might As the Hammer-God's kith and kin.
FELIX DAHN (1878).
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION 3
I
"DEUTSCHLAND UeBER ALLES" 31 German Humility 31 The Gentle German 49 The Great Misunderstood 55 Kultur 57 Der deutsche Gott 69 The Chosen People and its Mission 78 "Other Peoples" 84 Christ 88 Die deutsche Wahrheit 94 German Insight and Foresight 98 German Freedom 100 The German Language 101
II
GERMAN AMBITIONS 107 Expansion in Europe 107 Expansion beyond Europe 118 Weltmacht 122
III
WAR-WORSHIP 133 The Lust of Battle 133 War and Religion 135 War and Ethics 137 War and Biology 140 War and Kultur 143 Blood and Iron 145 War Necessary to Germany 149 War Need not be Defensive 153 Contempt for Peace 154 Militarism Exultant 159
IV
RUTHLESSNESS 169
V
MACHIAVELISM 185 Mendacity and Faithlessness 185 Might is Right 194
VI
ENGLAND, FRANCE, AND BELGIUM--ESPECIALLY ENGLAND 199 The False Islanders 199 Hymns of Hate 201 British Vices--Hypocrisy, Envy, and Greed 208 British Vices--Cowardice and Laziness 215 Treachery to Germanism 218 Sir Edward Grey and his Colleagues 220 Britain's Great Illusion 223 Comic Relief 228 France 233 Belgium 235
Index of Books and Pamphlets from which quotations are made 243
Index of Authors 255
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
In accordance with classic precedent, this anthology ought to have consisted of "1,001 Gems of German Thought," I have been content with half that number, not--heaven knows!--for any lack of material, but simply for lack of time and energy to make the ingathering. After all, enough is as good as a feast, and I think that the evidence as to the dominant characteristics of German mentality is tolerably complete as it stands.
Though I hope it is fairly representative, the collection does not pretend to be systematic. I have cast no sweeping drag-net, but have simply dipped almost at random into the wide ocean of German thought. Some of my most precious "finds" I have come upon by pure chance; and by pure chance, too, I have no doubt missed many others. Some books that I should have liked to examine have not been accessible to me; and there must be many of which I have never heard. On the other hand, the list of books from which my gems have been selected by no means indicates the extent of my reading--or skimming. I have gone through many books and pamphlets which furnished no quotable extracts, but none that diverged in tone from the rest, or marred the majestic unison of German self-laudation and contempt for the rest of the world. I have read of (but not seen) a book by one F.W. Foerster which is said to contain a protest against theoretic war-worship, and even a mild defence of England. How very mild it is we may judge from this sentence: "England has given us not only men like Lord Grey, scoundrels and hypocrites, who have this war upon their conscience; it has also given us the Salvation Army," etc., etc.
One voice the reader may be surprised to miss from the great chorus--the voice of William the Second. He is unrepresented--save in one passing remark (No. 136)--for two reasons. In the first place, his most striking utterance--the injunction to his soldiers to emulate the Huns of Attila--though almost certainly genuine, is not official, and could not be quoted without discussion.[1] In the second place, to confess the truth, I shrank from the intolerable monotony of reading his Majesty's speeches--that endless array of platitudes in full uniform--on the chance of discovering one or two quotable gems.
Practically all my quotations are taken from books and pamphlets. The sole exceptions are a few extracts from pre-war newspapers, cited in Nippold's "Der deutsche Chauvinismus." It would have been an endless and unprofitable task to garner up the extravagances of German newspapers since the outbreak of the war; not to mention that a German anthologist could probably make a pretty effective retort by going through the files of the British war press.
Is my anthology as it stands open to a telling _tu quoque_ by means of a selection of gems from British books and pamphlets of the type of those from which I have made my gleanings? Is it a case of the mote and the beam? I think we may be pretty confident that it is not. I doubt whether the literature of the world can show a parallel to the amazing outburst of tribal arrogance, unrestrained and unashamed, of which these pages contain but a few scattered specimens. In the extracts from literature "Before the War" (which have always been kept apart from those which date from "After July, 1914"), the reader may see this habit of mind growing and gathering strength: the declaration of war opens the floodgates, and the torrent rushes forth, grandiose, overwhelming, and, I believe, unique. I know of only one English book in which the German taste and temper is emulated. It is certainly a deplorable production; but it is the work of a wholly unknown man, whereas many of the most incredible utterances in the following pages proceed from men of world-wide reputation. Indeed, few contemporary German names of much distinction are absent from my list. Wilamowitz-Moellendorf, Harnack, Wundt, Oncken, Eucken, Haeckel, Naumann, Rohrbach, Sombart, Liszt, all join with a will in the chorus of arrogance, ambition, and hate. Many quotations come from a series of pamphlets called _Deutsche Reden in schwerer Zeit_, to which all the most eminent professors of Berlin University have contributed, with some from other universities. I have also, no doubt, culled passages from a good many nobodies and busybodies; but when the nobodies and the somebodies are found to echo and re-echo each other, the inference is that the general tone of the public mind is very fairly represented. It will be noted that many of the wildest shrieks of self-glorification and ferocity proceed from clerics and theologians.
The world as a whole has been curiously blind to the inordinate self-valuation characteristic of the German spirit. So long ago as the beginning of last century, we find Fichte assuring his countrymen that: "There are no two ways about it: if you founder, the whole of humanity founders with you, without hope of any possible restoration." Even Heine, in the preface to "Deutschland" (1844) could write half-jestingly that "if only the Germans would out-soar the French in deeds, as they already had in thought," and if they would carry out in their spiritual and political life some rather vaguely indicated reforms, "not only Alsace and Lorraine, but all France, all Europe, the whole world, would become German." "I often dream," he adds, "of this mission, this universal dominance of Germany." Of course we are not to write Heine down a Pan-German of the modern, realistic type. There is more than a dash of irony in this passage--he obviously implies that there is very little chance of Germany fulfilling the conditions that he lays down as indispensable to her world-domination. Nevertheless, there is a sinister significance in the fact that a spirit like his should be found dallying for a moment with dreams of world-supremacy. It was, of course, the war of 1870, with its resounding triumphs, that brought these visions, so to speak, within the range of practical politics. For fifteen or twenty years, Germany was, as Bismarck said, "sated"; but with the coming of the youthful, pushful, self-assertive Kaiser, her aggressive instincts re-awakened and she fell to brooding over the idea that her incomparable physical and spiritual energies were cabin'd, cribb'd, confined. The rapid growth of her population reinforced this idea, and the increase of her wealth, as was natural, only made her greedy for more. The result was that she gave her soul over in fatal earnest to an ambitious and grasping tribalism to which she was, from of old, only too prone. The Pan-Germans were the Uhlans, the stormy petrels, of the movement; but the whole mind of the nation was in reality carried away by it, save for a very small section which was conscious of its dangers and feebly protested. The egoism of which she was constantly accusing other nations, ran riot in her own breast, was elevated into a political virtue, and expressed itself on the spiritual side in a towering racial vanity. The word "deutsch," always a word of magical properties, became the synonym of an unapproachable superiority in every walk of life[2]--a superiority that sanctified aggression and made domination a duty. In many minds, no doubt, these sentiments wore a decent mask; but the moment war broke out, the mask dropped off, with the amazing results very imperfectly mirrored in the following pages.
But self-worship and the craving for aggrandizement are in reality very uninspiring emotions. The thing that has most deeply impressed me in my searching of the German war-scriptures is the extraordinary aridity of spirit that pervades them. A literature more unidea'd (to use Johnson's word), more devoid of original thought, or grace, or charm, or atmosphere, it would be hard to conceive. There are, of course, some inequalities. One or two writers seem (to the foreign reader) to have a certain dignity of style which is lacking in the common herd. But in the very best there is little that gives one even literary pleasure, and nothing that shows any depth of humanity, any generous feeling, any openness of outlook. Even a happy phrase is so rare that, when it does occur, one treasures it. I find, for instance, in a little book by Friedrich Meinecke, a distinction between "politics of ideas and politics of interests" that is happily put and worth remembering. Again, Professor v. Harnack re-states the principle that "he's the best cosmopolite who loves his native country best" in a rather ingenious way: "There is no such thing as fruit," he says, "there are only apples, pears, etc. If we want to be good fruit, we must be a good apple or a good pear." These are small scintillations, but the toiler through German pamphlet literature is truly grateful for them.
For the rest, when you have read three or four of these pamphlets, you have read all. The writers seem to be working a sort of Imperial German treadmill, stepping dutifully from plank to plank of patriotic dogma in a pre-arranged rotation. The topics are few and ever-recurrent--"dieser uns aufgezwungene Krieg" (this war which has been forced upon us), the glorious uprising of Germany at its outbreak, the miracle of mobilization, the Russian knout, French frivolity, the base betrayal of Germany by envious, hypocritical England, the immeasurable superiority of German Kultur and Technik, the saintly virtues of the German soldier, and so on, through the appointed litany. There is even a set of obligatory quotations which very few have the strength of mind to resist. By far the most popular is Geibel's couplet:
Und es mag am deutschen Wesen Einmal noch die Welt genesen.
(And the world may once more be healed by the German nature, or character.) It came into vogue before the war. The Kaiser struck the keynote of the whole chorus of self-exaltation when he said (August 31, 1907): "The German people will be the granite block on which the good God may build and complete His work of Kultur in the world. Then will be fulfilled the word of the poet who said that the world will one day be healed by the German character." In the extracts collected in Nippold's "Der deutsche Chauvinismus" (a pre-war publication) the Geibel couplet appears at least four times--probably oftener. After the outbreak of the war, it is easier to reckon the utterances in which it does _not_ occur than those in which it does. Next in popularity to the "Wesen--genesen" catchword comes the Kaiser's brilliant saying, "I no longer know of any parties--I know only German brothers." He is no good German who does not quote this with reverent admiration. Then come four or five others which are about equally in request: Bismarck's "We Germans fear God, and nothing else in the world"; "the old _furor Teutonicus_"; "_oderint dum metuant_"; Arndt's
Der Gott der Eisen wachsen liess, Der wollte keine Knechte--
(The God who made the iron grow meant none to be a bondman); and, finally,
Und wenn die Welt voll Teufel waer', Es soll uns doch gelingen--
(And though the world were full of devils, we should succeed in spite of them.) Even a scholar of the distinction of Ulrich v. Wilamowitz-Moellendorf, though he avoids the Geibel tag, ends one of his orations by quoting "Deutschland ueber Alles." Imagine Sir Walter Raleigh or Prof. Gilbert Murray winding up an address with a selection from "Rule, Britannia"!
One English quotation occurs as often as any, except the ubiquitous "Wesen-genesen." It is "My country, right or wrong," invariably quoted in the form, "Right or wrong, my country." This is supposed to be the shockingly immoral watchword of British patriotism. It matters nothing to the German pamphleteer that the maxim is American, and that it is never quoted in England--nor, I believe, in the country of its origin--except in a spirit of irony.
And in the face of this deadly uniformity of sentiments, phraseology, and quotations, Professor Lasson has the audacity to assure us that "The German is personally independent. He wants to judge for himself. It is not so easy for him as for others blindly to follow this or that catchword!"
We are all, I suppose, unconscious of our own foibles, but I wonder whether we are all so apt as the Germans to deny them (and very likely attribute them to other people) while in the very act of exemplifying them. For example, it is firmly fixed in the German mind that the English consider themselves God's Chosen People, predestined to the empire of the world. I have collected numerous instances of this allegation (Nos. 453-466), but not a single one which is substantiated by a quotation from an English writer. It is, I am convinced, impossible to bring evidence for it, unless some expressions to this effect may be found in the writings of persons who believe that the English are descended from the lost Ten Tribes--persons who are about as representative of the English nation as those who believe that the earth is flat. The English mind, indeed, is but little inclined to this primitive form of theism. The German mind, on the other hand, is curiously addicted to it, and I have brought together a number of instances (Nos. 117-135) in which German writers make the very claim to Divine calling and election which they falsely attribute to the English, and denounce as insanely presumptuous.[3] So, too, with egoism. The Germans do not actually consider themselves free from egoism; on the contrary, they are rather given to boasting of it (Nos. 212, 213, 248, 300); but while it is a virtue in them, it is a very repulsive vice in the English. As for cant, which is, of course, the commonest charge against the English, one can only say that, when the German gives his mind to it, he proves himself an accomplished master of the art (Nos. 47, 55, 79, 89, 94, 104, 237, 423). Here is an example, from a book about Germany by a German-Austrian,[4] which scarcely comes within the scope of my anthology, but it is too characteristic to be lost. "_If you want_," says the writer, in italics, "_thoroughly to understand the German, you must compare the German sportsman with the hunters of other countries_. Then a sacred thrill (_heiliger Schauer_) of deep understanding will come over your heart." For the German sportsman "takes more pleasure in the life that surrounds him and which he _protects_, than in the shot which only the last hot virile craving (_Mannesgier_) wrings from him, and which he fires only when he knows that he will _kill_, _painlessly kill_. For this is the root principle of German sportsmanship: 'God grant me one day such an end as I strive to bestow upon the game.' ... And if, by mischance, the German sportsman wounds without killing a head of game, he suffers with it, and does not sleep or rest till he has put it out of its misery." If this be not very nauseous cant, where shall we seek for it?
Another curious German characteristic is the idea that, however truculent and menacing a writer's expressions may be, other people do him and his country a wicked injustice if they take him at his word. A good instance of this occurs in "Ein starkes Volk--Ein starkes Heer," by Kurd v. Strantz, published in 1914, shortly before the war. This writer quotes (or rather misquotes) with enthusiasm from Goethe:--
Du musst steigen und gewinnen, Du musst siegend triumphieren Oder deinend unterliegen, Amboss oder Hammer sein.[5]
Next he proceeds to quote from Felix Dahn:--
Seitdem ist's freudig Germanenrecht Mit dem Hammer Land zu erwerben. Wir sind von des Hammergottes Geschlecht, Und wollen sein Weltreich erben.[6]
Then, on the same page, only four lines lower down, he remarks plaintively:--"Foreign, and especially French, diplomacy is now industriously spreading the calumny that the German Government and the German people are given to rattling the sabre, and that we want to use for aggressive ends the increased armament which has been forced upon us." Is it mere hostile prejudice to hold that his own poetical selections give a certain colour to the "calumny"?
Most of the German attacks on England will be found, in the last analysis, to rest on this quaint habit of mind--the habit of assuming that, no matter how hostile and threatening Germany's words and deeds might be, we had no right to do her the injustice of supposing that she meant anything by them. We ought to have known that she was merely "dissembling her love."