Part 4

Germany wanted this war, planned this war, prepared for this war, and made treasure houses in which she could store the loot of this war. Blood went to Germany's head like drugged wine. For years she has been beside herself with military success. The Kaiser for twenty years has been rattling his sword and bullying the nations. Standing in the market-place, like some huge Goliath, in the spirit of the common braggart he has shouted, "I can lick anybody in the world." In the nature of the case, one brigand with his revolver is equal to a hundred business men and manufacturers in a railroad car. In the nature of the case also, Germany, with her military preparedness, should have been equal to a score of countries like Belgium and France and Great Britain and the United States--industrious, hard-working, but unmilitary, peacefully disposed. The deadly virus of avarice and militarism has burned like a fever in Germany's soul, even as avarice burned in the soul of Judas Iscariot, and made him a traitor that crucified not Belgium, but Jesus upon the cross.

THE GERMAN PEOPLE AND THE KAISER

Little by little under the influence of this Pan-German empire scheme, the German people began to go to pieces morally. The breakdown of character is slow. The most virulent disease needs time to destroy the tissues, and poison the blood. The first to go over to the Potsdam gang were the officers and the army. Next followed the university professors, the bankers and the landowners. Last of all came the manufacturers and the shippers, who for a long time were timid lest their foreign trade be injured. Finally the state clergy, who received their salary from the Kaiser's treasury, were whipped into line, and men like Eucken, Harnack, heard the crack of the slave-driver's scourge above their heads, and became abject servants.

At last the woven web was spread all over the world through spies. Could any man have been lifted up above Berlin, and had full power to survey the whole world, he would have seen a spider's web, with its center in Berlin, with the Kaiser as the big black spider, sending out along the sinuous threads into every capital of every country and of every continent his evil plans and plots. Men like von Bernstorff in Washington, and Münsterberg in Boston, von Bopp, recently convicted in San Francisco, Luxburg in Buenos Ayres, with their schemes to blow up munition factories, planting of bombshells in ships, dynamiting Parliament buildings, blowing up bridges, organizing sedition in Mexico, India, and Brazil, the millions and millions of dollars spent in our own country, the secret decorations of medals given to bankers, manufacturers, shippers, editors, newspaper boys, stenographers, make up a story of Machiavellian deviltry and subtle cunning that has no parallel. The only difference between Judas and the average German spy is that the modern spy in the United States would not only have betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver, but would have given ten per cent. off for cash. All that Germany won in three hundred years through the teachings of Martin Luther has been lost in twenty-five years through the influence of the Kaiser and his militarists. In the presence of all the world we have seen Germany lose her soul. All that John Milton taught, as to the fall of Satan as an angel, becoming a devil, has been literally enacted on the stage before the nations of the earth. What in 1900 was efficiency, in 1914 became the science of lying, theft, rape, poison and assassination.

GERMANY CONSTRUCTS A PHILOSOPHY TO JUSTIFY HERSELF

Having entered upon war as her chief national industry, and looking with greedy eyes upon the steel plants, the looms and factories of rich Belgium; envying France her unique supremacy as the leader of the fine arts; tempted by the little states like Holland and Denmark on the west and Rumania and Poland on the east, states that seemed like purple clusters, bursting with wine for German lips, it became necessary for Germany to find a philosophy that would break down the great convictions of morality inherited from Martin Luther.

All wise men trace deeds back to the thinking of the doer, just as they trace bitter water back to a poisoned spring. Of the German teaching of Prussianism we can only say, no grapes from Prussian thorns, no figs from Prussian thistles. What the Prussians thought in their hearts, that they became in their lives. What began as sparks of avarice and ambition has ended in this world conflagration, and Germany is responsible, not for the sparks, but for the world ruin. Alcibiades and Catiline and Benedict Arnold all thought in terms of selfishness, and they all did cruel deeds. The murder of Edith Cavell and Captain Fryatt, the sinking of women and children on steamers, the rape of Belgium and Northern France, the assassination of Poland, the deliberate, cold-blooded plots by the German officers with the Turkish soldiers to exterminate the Armenians, so that they could settle on the lands, are the outer exhibition in deeds of the inner philosophy of the Germans. That is why their favorite philosopher Nietzsche says that Germany's gift is brute force and not intellect. ("Ecce Homo," page 38, and page 134: "Wherever Germany extends her sway, she ruins culture. I feel it my duty to tell the Germans that every crime against culture lies on their conscience.")

A philosophy therefore was concocted, called "Prussianism." This philosophy is no secret, for Germany has trumpeted it forth, from the top of the palace in Potsdam and the Dom in Berlin. For fifteen years it has been the very essence of the teaching in her universities, her pulpit, her press and her Parliament. This is its substance: Over against Martin Luther's conception of God as the All-wise and Good Father, who is righteous Himself, and demands righteousness of His children, the new philosophy sets up the political State as the be-all and end-all for the German people. Omnipotence means a Kaiser's arm, with that of a war staff, carried up to the nth degree of power by seventy millions of other arms.

"Weakness is the only sin against the Holy Ghost," cries Bernhardi. Let the individual German soldier be strong enough to trample under foot the Belgian or French merchant or girl. Let the German navy be strong enough to sink every _Lusitania_ or _Sussex_. Let the German army be equal to overrunning, looting, pillaging and dynamiting France and Belgium. To be beaten is to be contemptible, and therefore to be sinful. Whatever wins the victory on land or sea is right. The moment Germany crosses the frontiers all Belgians and Frenchmen lose any right whatever to either their lives or their property, but from that moment the invader's life and effects become sacred.

THE REFLEX INFLUENCE OF THE PAN-GERMAN SCHEME UPON GERMANY'S STATESMEN

Most disastrous and disorganizing the reflex influence of Germany's philosophy of Prussianism, and her plot for a Pan-German empire upon Germany's statesmen and diplomats. From Phocion to Lincoln high-minded statesmen have been jealous of their pledges and of their treaties with other countries. In one of his noblest orations Edmund Burke speaks of "the peculiar sanctity attaching to an international treaty." Our own Washington spoke about the importance of consideration and long deliberation before an ambassador gave his word that, once it is given, must stand "like the law of God." Business men scoff at the trickster, who plays fast and loose with his written word given to the bank or to his creditors. Nor is there a tribe of Indians that, once they have eaten salt, or exchanged the pipe of peace, but considers the pledge precious as life itself. All civilized nations, therefore, have been horrified at the way Germany has broken down on the side of truthfulness, until it is a proverb in the world to-day that a thing is as worthless as a written pledge by Germany.

THE SCRAP OF PAPER

Our scholars have long known that Frederick the Great was the first German to say that international treaties were to be observed so long as they were useful and served his purpose, and when that time passed a treaty was to be counted "a scrap of paper." When then the English Ambassador, on July 1, 1914, told Bethmann-Hollweg plainly that if Germany invaded Belgium, England would have no other course than to join her armies to those of Belgium and France, the German Prime Minister exclaimed, "And declare war for what? For just a scrap of paper!" We now know that Germany signed treaties for purposes of diplomatic camouflage, to blind the eyes of other governments while she was making ready her weapons for attack. Most significant that speech in the Reichstag on July 31, 1914, that contains this: "We cannot longer postpone the fulfillment of the pledge given to Austria at the conference of July 5th." During all those days, between July 30th and August 4th, when the Kaiser was apparently trying to prevent war, Germany and Austria were secretly preparing cannon, guns, ammunition, railway trains, food, and secretly hurrying them to the front, during three entire weeks, following the agreement between the Kaiser and the Emperor. Upon eternal brass, therefore, Germany engraved her own infamy. "We are now in a state of necessity, and necessity knows no law. We were compelled to override the just protest of the Belgian government. The wrong--I speak openly--that we are committing, we will endeavour to make good as soon as our military goal has been reached. Anybody who is threatened as we are threatened can have only one thought, how he is to hack his way through,--how he is to hack his way through."

CONSUL TO NORWAY

That is why our President, speaking for the republic, has told Germany plainly that no treaty signed by the Emperor and his government means anything whatsoever. There is no German in the Fatherland or in the United States but understands thoroughly that the word of a German statesman is less than nothing: the shadow of the shade of the possibility of a cipher. Here is von Bernstorff, given his papers and sent back to Berlin. Bernstorff gives out a final interview, stating that he has the full approval of his conscience (a favourite expression of German spies), in that he was carrying away from the United States the full consciousness that he had never done one deed or had one thought save to draw the Fatherland and the great republic closer together, though all the time his secret agents had been journeying back and forth between Washington and Mexico, carrying bribes, organizing sedition, maturing plots, looking towards war between Mexico and Texas, and pledging Carranza that Germany would restore to her New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada. Scarcely less horrible Luxburg's cipher despatch advising Germany to sink the steamers of the Argentine Republic, "leaving no trace behind." In Norway the German Ambassador from Berlin used his trunk, covered with the red sealing wax of the Foreign Office, to carry bombs, and the cultures of glanders and anthrax to spread disease among the Norwegian people and to sink their steamers. In the old days of Cæsar Borgia in Italy, poisoning was made a fine art. Whenever the Italian prince coveted a rich man's palace, diamond ring, beautiful wife or young daughter, or his villa, he invited the owner to dine at the palace, having first of all poisoned the wine or the meat. Now the world has wakened up to discover that the Borgias were children in the arts of dissimulation and hypocrisy, and that Germany is the original inventor of perjury. The Kaiser, Bethmann-Hollweg, von Bernstorff, and some pro-Germans in this country have displayed a form of wickedness so cool, calculated, and scientific, as to seem the characteristics of fiends, while their plots to plant bombshells on our steamers, and kill innocent people by the hundreds represent such hardened forms of fiendishness that even the worst thief would scarcely dare hint at such crimes to his own accomplice in devilishness.

GERMANY'S POLICY TOWARDS THE UNITED STATES

Not less striking the influence of Germany's philosophy and her Pan-German empire scheme upon her diplomats in foreign countries. We need not take the opinion of the British or Belgian, the French or American authors. It is enough to ask for the testimony of the Germans themselves. One of the most important documents bearing upon this war is a volume of reminiscences published seven years before the war began, but practically unknown in the United States. This volume is entitled "Experiences at a German Embassy; ten years of German-American diplomacy," by Emil Witte, late counsellor of litigation; Leipzig, 1907. Probably not more than two or three thousand of the author's friends ever bought a copy of this book, but the volume spreads out before us like a black map the fact that for ten years von Holleben and Münsterberg with their German associates were steadily building up the organization of all German Americans preparatory to a time when the war between the United States and Germany would partake the character of a Civil War.

This counsellor of litigation tells us that on the German day, October 6, 1901, Germanism in the United States was organized at Philadelphia. The diplomat then tells us how, directed by the German Ambassador, he went up and down the United States organizing in New York, Brooklyn, Chicago, Milwaukee, Cincinnati and St. Louis the German Soldiers' Societies of the United States, and wooing the German-Americans over to the point where they would see that their first allegiance was to the Fatherland, their second to the United States. The German foreign office and the Kaiser were constantly sending von Holleben for German-Americans flags, decorations, gracious letters, medals, invitations to visit Germany and meet the Royalty--methods that culminated in the German law that made it possible for pro-Germans in this country and for their sons despite American citizenship to keep their German citizenship with all the rights of suffrage in the Fatherland. Very significant also one sentence in these reminiscences of this German diplomat: "The relations between Official Germany and the emigrant subjects of the Emperor, whether they have become citizens of the Republic or not, may lead to serious complications between Germany and the United States, and to unforeseen incidents which at any moment may involve both powers in serious difficulty."

No scholar longer doubts that the German government fully expected that when war was declared some six or eight thousand German-Americans belonging to the German Societies in the United States would bring about something akin to Civil War. This is not to be wondered at in view of the fact that for years Germany's official representatives had been receiving from time to time honours and addresses from the Kaiser and sending back to Berlin cablegrams pledging undying faithfulness and loyalty, and affirming their purpose to enthrone German culture in the United States. This diplomat quotes in full the address of the German Ambassador in behalf of the Kaiser on presenting the German colours to the German Military Society of Chicago.

"Greetings from the German Emperor! That is the cry with which I come before you. His Majesty, my most gracious master, has ordered me to hand to you to-day the colour which has been desired by you so strongly and for so long. The colour is a token of his Majesty's approval with which the Kaiser remembers in love and friendship those who have served in the German Army and Navy, and those who have fought and bled for the Fatherland. This colour is to be the symbol of German faithfulness, German manliness and German military honour. His Majesty asks you to accept this colour as a token of that unity which should prevail among all German soldiers, to act also abroad [Think of that "abroad," in Chicago!] in accordance with the sentiments of German loyalty and German sense of duty, and to take for your maxim the word of that great German, Bismarck: We Germans fear God, but nothing else in the world. Now let the colour flutter in the wind. In this moment of enthusiasm let us all sound the cry that is now on the lips of every old German soldier; his Majesty, the German Emperor, William II, hurrah, hurrah, hurrah!"

The history of no country contains plot so astounding! Under cover of hospitality the German guest was planting bombshells in the home of his host. With infinite cunning, the German diplomats built a German kingdom within our kingdom. How thoroughly they alienated many German-Americans is proven to-day by this fact, that many members of the German Societies in the United States, the moment any American comes out against Germany, break with the banker, drop the newspaper, give up the pew in the church, for while their lips announce that they are Americans, in their heart they feel that their first loyalty is to the Kaiser, and not to our government.

GERMAN DIPLOMATS IN THE WESTERN CITIES

These "Reminiscences" also acquaint Americans with many other plans to organize the German-Americans in the United States preparatory to the day when Canada and the United States should become German colonies. Silly as all this seems to Americans it was very serious to von Holleben, von Bopp, the recently convicted German consul, Münsterberg, Boy-Ed, von Papen and Bernstorff. In discussing the certainty of war with England, the author states that Germany is absolutely ready for such an event as war in America, since this is necessary. He quotes von Schleinitz as answering: "I know all this and I know more. I have spoken with officers in high positions in Berlin, and I have heard surprising things. Germany reckons very strongly upon the support of Germans living in the western states. We looked at one another. WE KNEW."

Little did the people of the United States realize that in 1907, buried in the German language, there was being sold in Germany a volume of reminiscences by a counsellor of legation at the German Embassy in Washington, containing these sentences: "Professor Münsterberg had created a widely spread organization of espionage in the United States. Münsterberg had been sent to America by direct command of the Emperor, in order to mislead the public of the United States with regard to Germany's true policy towards America. He receives five thousand dollars from Harvard and five thousand dollars from the Berlin foreign office." Then follows high praise for Münsterberg in view of the fact that he was sent to the United States as a lecturer, as a camouflage device to conceal the real fact that he was the new head of the German spy system in America. Beyond all doubt he was almost the only one that succeeded in making his camouflage work of lecturing so successful as to overshadow the more important fact that he was the organizer of the most efficient system of espionage that the Kaiser has ever had.[3]

GERMAN PHILOSOPHY OF MILITARISM HAS DEBAUCHED GERMANY'S UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS

Consider how strangely the Pan-German scheme has degraded Germany's university professors. The glory of every great city and land is its scholars, with their love of truth, and their stainless lives. We have had our civilization at the hands of men who loved the truth supremely, pursued the truth eternally, and cherished the truth above their fear of hell or hope of heaven. The world has its liberty, its science and its law at the hands of the heroes who preferred the truth above life. Concerning the patriots, the reformers and the statesmen, we can only say they were stoned, they were sawn asunder, they were crucified in Jerusalem, poisoned in Athens, tortured in Ephesus, exiled in Florence, burned at the stake in Oxford, assassinated in London. But the iron autocracy and militarism of Germany made cowards of her university men. An address has been issued to the civilized world, signed by ninety-odd German professors. They receive their salaries from State endowments. Any hour the Kaiser or the Chancellor can cut off their income. When the indignation of the civilized world flamed out against Germany because of the rape of Belgium, the German Government asked these professors to sign a document, and so degraded were these men through the German philosophy of militarism and autocracy, that they obeyed--losing their souls to save their salary. And consider what they signed!

MORAL COWARDICE OF SCHOLARS

By royal command these ninety-three professors signed a statement saying: "It is not true that we wronged Belgium." In the Kaiser's address that he himself published, we read, "Give no quarter, take no prisoners"; he adds, "Let all who fall into your hands be at your mercy; make yourself as terrible as the Huns." This address was circulated on millions of letter cards all over Germany. Realizing the mistake made by the Kaiser these professors signed a statement saying: "It is not true that our soldiers ever injured the life of a single Belgian." Socrates, Savonarola or Lincoln would have died a thousand deaths upon the rack, rather than have consented to sign their names to a lie, but the Kaiser and the Chancellor had only to command their servants to lie, and they lied like slaves. It makes the university professor ashamed of the German teachers. Think of Harnack and Eucken, with their moral cowardice and their intellectual subserviency. Plainly that is what Nietzsche meant when he said (page 134, "Ecce Homo"), "Every crime against culture that has been committed for a hundred years rests upon Germany."

GERMANY ORGANIZES A PLAN TO EXTERMINATE CONSCIENCE

When her Kaiser and Germany's War Staff had determined to do evil, to become world conquerors, and prepared a philosophy that would justify the crimes necessary to win the goal, Germany then began to get rid of any vestige of conscience that survived from the faith of Martin Luther. It was not enough to control the philosophers and scholars, it became necessary to popularize the new license to lawlessness, lust and theft. Unfortunately, Germany was complicated by her treaties with other nations as to the conduct of war. These treaties were a thousand times more sacred than contracts of the merchant for a note at his bank. Germany had solemnly covenanted to attack only armies, and to safeguard and protect hospitals, schools, churches, with the life and property of non-combatants. The Christian religion, also, as presented by the German Luther, taught obligations involved in the Ten Commandments. The new system of militarism, therefore, could enter the mind of the German soldier only when the old ideas of the Ten Commandments, duty, God, and the obligations to the weak, as taught by Jesus, had been cast out. One of the crimes proscribed by civilized states is the crime of teaching other men to do wickedness. But the German Kaiser and War Staff have so far lost their souls that they have deliberately written a text-book teaching men murder as a science.

FINALLY GERMANY ENTHRONED CRUELTY INSTEAD OF CHRIST'S LAW OF PITY