But Luther's ethics were the ethics of Moses. For several generations
the German peasants had been taught that it was criminal to kill,
steal, burn, rape and pillage. They knew by heart the words of Jesus,
"Woe unto him who offends against one of my little ones; it were better
for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were
drowned in the depths of the sea." Plainly the Ten Commandments stood
squarely in the pathway of the Kaiser's ambition. Unless his ambitions
for world rule were to be defeated, some scheme had to be invented
to free the German soldier from conscience, and break the fetters of
divine law.
Therefore the soldier's token was invented. It comes under Jesus'
special condemnation, in that not only the Kaiser and the War Staff
pursued crime, but "taught men so." These tokens are made of stiff
cardboard or of aluminum. At the top is a portrait of Deity as the
Kaiser conceives him to be; in one hand the Kaiser's God holds a
sickle, for the death-harvest. Beneath, the Kaiser and his War Staff
wrote these words, "Strike him dead; the Day of Judgment will not ask
you for reasons."
The soldier might read this: "You can slay, pillage, loot, burn, rape,
leave thousands of bodies massacred and mutilated on the ground, but
remember that your Kaiser and your War Staff will stand between you and
the avenging God, and will see to it that the Judge of all the earth
makes you no trouble on the great day of accounting." The Kaiser's
God, however, is our Devil. For three years the Kaiser has had the
Devil all mixed up with God,--being unable to distinguish between them.
Whenever the Kaiser uses the word "Gott," Americans always substitute
the word "Devil." With one change the soldier's token is quite
accurate,--"Strike them dead,--old men, girls and children,--the Devil
will not ask you for reasons. Hell and damnation are fully satisfied
with all you Germans have done."