Now has arisen the Menace, the eternal foe of a free people, the
Prussian Creed. The following is a composite statement of Prussianism:
"compiled sentence by sentence from the utterances of Prussians, the
Kaiser and his generals, professors, editors, and Nietzsche, part of it
said in cold blood, years before this war, and all of it a declaration
of faith now being ratified by action." It is taken word for word from
the eleventh chapter of Owen Wister's remarkable work "The Pentecost of
Calamity,"[A] and is the most concise statement of the Menace that I
have seen.
[A] "The Pentecost of Calamity," by Owen Wister. The Macmillan Company.
"We Hohenzollerns take our crown from God alone. On me the Spirit of God
has descended. I regard my whole ... task as appointed by heaven. Who
opposes me I shall crush to pieces. Nothing must be settled in this
world without the intervention ... of ... the German Emperor. He who
listens to public opinion runs a danger of inflicting immense harm on
... the State. When one occupies certain positions in the world one
ought to make dupes rather than friends. Christian morality cannot be
political. Treaties are only a disguise to conceal other political aims.
Remember that the German people are the chosen of God.
"Might is right and ... is decided by war. Every youth who enters a
beer-drinking and duelling club will receive the true direction of his
life. War in itself is a good thing. God will see to it that war always
recurs. The efforts directed toward the abolition of war must not only
be termed foolish, but absolutely immoral. The peace of Europe is only a
secondary matter for us. The sight of suffering does one good; the
infliction of suffering does one more good. This war must be conducted
as ruthlessly as possible.
"The Belgians should not be shot _dead_. They should be ... so left as
to make impossible all hope of recovery. The troops are to treat the
Belgian civil population with unrelenting severity and frightfulness.
Weak nations have not the same right to live as powerful ... nations.
The world has no longer need of little nationalities. We Germans have
little esteem and less respect ... for Holland. We need to enlarge our
colonial possessions; such territorial acquisitions we can only realize
at the cost of other states.
"Russia must no longer be our frontier. The Polish press should be
annihilated ... likewise the French and Danish.... The Poles should be
allowed ... three privileges: to pay taxes, serve in the army, and shut
their jaws. France must be so completely crushed that she will never
again cross our path. You must remember that we have not come to make
war on the French people, but to bring them the higher Civilization. The
French have shown themselves decadent and without respect for the Divine
law. Against England we fight for booty. Our real enemy is England. We
have to ... crush absolutely perfidious Albion ... subdue her to such an
extent that her influence all over the world is broken forever.
"German should replace English as the world language. English, the
bastard tongue ... must be swept into the remotest corners ... until it
has returned to its original elements of an insignificant pirate
dialect. The German language acts as a blessing which, coming direct
from the hand of God, sinks into the heart like a precious balm. To us,
more than any other nation, is intrusted the true structure of human
existence. Our own country, by employing military power, has attained a
degree of Culture which it could never have reached by peaceful means.
"The civilization of mankind suffers every time a German becomes an
American. Let us drop our miserable attempts to excuse Germany's action.
We willed it. Our might shall create a new law in Europe. It is Germany
that strikes. We are morally and intellectually superior beyond all
comparison.... We must ... fight with Russian beasts, English
mercenaries, and Belgian fanatics. We have nothing to apologize for. It
is no consequence whatever if all the monuments ever created, all the
pictures ever painted, all the buildings ever erected by the great
architects of the world, be destroyed.... The ugliest stone placed to
mark the burial of a German grenadier is a more glorious monument than
all the cathedrals of Europe put together. No respect for the tombs of
Shakespeare, Newton, and Faraday.
"They call us barbarians. What of it? The German claim must be: ...
Education to hate ... Organization of hatred ... Education to the desire
for hatred. Let us abolish unripe and false shame.... To us is given
faith, hope, and hatred; but hatred is the greatest among them."
The German war code, introduction, paragraph three, reads as follows: "A
war conducted with energy cannot be directed merely against the
combatants of the enemy state, and the positions which they occupy, but
will in like manner seek to destroy the total intellectual and material
resources of the latter."