The lecturer, with true German casuistry, minimises the rhinoceros and
magnifies the fly, so that there is “very little difference” between
them, as far as his arguments are concerned. Fortunately for the cause
of the Allies, casuistry is not a military asset; had it been one,
Germany would long since have won the war, and that not only on this
count, for the saying that “the wish is father to the thought” is
nowhere more true than in Germany.
There, the people are now firmly convinced that the war was forced on
them, thanks to the casuistry of their leaders; they honestly believe,
if professorial writings have any sincerity in them, that the invasion
of Belgium was justified by their need, and that scraps of paper are
only scraps of paper where they, the chosen nation for the spread
of culture, are concerned; they believe that Britain’s blockade is
barbarous and unjust, that France is an effete nation, that Russia is
peopled by a horde of savages, that the starvation of their civilian
prisoners instead of exchanging them is a just measure on their
part--and many other things which sane reasoning shows to be false.
They have, apparently, an endless credulity.
If one would question the cause for this, the answer lies in one
word--“Pan-Germanism,” that disease which has sapped away the moral
fibre of a nation and implanted colossal conceit in its place. No
statement is more true than that Germany is devoid of a sense of
humour, for this sense is in its essence that of proportion, and not
only in her methods of war and her dealings with the rest of the world
has Germany lost all sense of proportion, but also in her estimate
of herself and her place in the scheme of things. A proper sense of
proportion is incompatible with Pan-Germanism.