[Illustration]
_"SOMETHING'S WRONG. SHE DOESN'T SEEM TO INSPIRE CONFIDENCE"_
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It is Germany's "Kultur," her spiritual code, that is responsible for
America's entrance into the war; her gruesome sacrifice to Moloch of all
which distinguishes humanity from the brute and the savage. It is her
philosophy which has made us her horrified but resolute foe.
The fruits of her spirit stand forth alike in her speech and acts.
"Kultur is a spiritual organization of the world, which does not exclude
bloody savagery. It raises the daemoniac to sublimity. It is above
morality, reason, science," so wrote a Teutonic expounder in the first
year of the war. "We have become a nation of wrath; we think only of the
war. We execute God Almighty's will, and the edicts of His justice we
will fulfil, imbued with holy rage, in vengeance upon the ungodly. God
calls us to murderous battles, even if worlds should thereby fall to
ruins," so wrote one of Germany's poets. "Whoever cannot prevail upon
himself to approve from the bottom of his heart the sinking of the
_Lusitania_, whoever cannot conquer his sense of the gigantic cruelty to
unnumbered perfectly innocent victims--and give himself up to honest
delight at this victorious exploit of German defensive power--him we
judge to be no true German," so wrote one of her pastors. And for
hideous, ruthless deeds which violate every sanctity and deify falsehood
we need but cite her slaughter of children and the aged, her poisoning
of wells, her shooting of nurses, her sinking of hospital ships, her
brutal deportations and all the revolting sinuosities of her spy system.