Had it not culminated before our eyes, the case of Germany would be
perfectly incredible. As it stands to-day, the truly incredible thing
is that she should have made her spring at the throat of an
unexpecting, unprepared world. Now that she _has_ sprung, the
diagnosis of her case has been often and ably made--before the event,
Dr. Charles Sarolea, a Belgian gentleman, made it notably; but
prophets are seldom recognized except by posterity. The case of
Germany is a hospital case, a case for the alienist; the mania of
grandeur, complemented by the mania of persecution.
Very well do I remember the first dawning hint I had of this diseased
mental state. It was Wednesday, August 5, 1914. We were in mid-ocean.
Before the bulletin board we passengers were clustered to read that
day's marconigram and learn what more of Europe had fallen to pieces
since yesterday. This morning was posted the Kaiser's proclamation,
quoting Hamlet, calling on his subjects "to be or not to be," and to
defy a world conspired against them. In these words there was such a
wild, incoherent ring of exaltation that I said to a friend: "Can he
be off his head?"
Later in that voyage we sped silent and unlanterned through the fog
from two German cruisers, of which nobody seemed personally afraid but
one stewardess. She said: "They're all wild beasts. They would send
us all to the bottom." No one believed her. Since then we believe her.
Since then we have heard the wild incoherent ring in many German
voices besides the Kaiser's, and we know to-day that Germany's mania
is analogous to those mental epidemics of the Middle Ages, when
fanaticism, usually religious, sent entire communities into various
forms of madness.
The case of Germany is the Prussianizing of Germany. Long after all of
us are gone, men will still be studying this war; and, whatever
responsibility for it be apportioned among the nations, the huge
weight and bulk of guilt will be laid on Prussia and the
Hohenzollern--unless, indeed, it befall that Germany conquer the world
and the Kaiser dictate his version of History to us all, suppressing
all other versions, as he has conducted the training of his subjects
since 1888. But this will not be; whatever comes first, this cannot be
the end. If I believed that the earth would be Prussianized, life
would cease to be desirable.
To me the whole case of Germany, the whole process, seems a fatalistic
thing, destined, inevitable; cosmic forces above and beyond men's
comprehension flooding this northern land with their high tide, as once
they flooded southern coasts; giving to this Teuton race its turn, its
day, its hour of white heat and of bloom, its temperamental greatness,
its strength and excess of vital sap, intellectual, procreative--all
this grandeur to be hurled into tragedy by its own action.
The process goes back a long way behind Napoleon--who stayed it for a
while--to years when we see the Germany of the Reformation, Poetry,
Music, the grand Germany, blossoming in the very same moment that the
Prussian poison was also germinating. About 1830, Heine perceived and
wrote scornfully concerning the new and evil influence. This was a
germination of state and family ambition combined, fermenting at last
into lust for world dominion. It grows quite visible first in Frederick
the Great. By him the Prussian state of mind and international ethics
began to be formulated. By force and fraud he annexed weak peoples'
territory. He cut Poland's body in three, blasphemously inviting Russia
and Austria to partake with him of his Eucharist.
Theft has followed theft since Frederick's. His cynical, strong spirit
guided Prussia after Waterloo, guided first the predecessor of
Bismarck and next Bismarck himself, with his stealing of
Schleswig-Holstein, his dishonest mutilation of the telegram at Ems
and the subsequent rape of Alsace and Lorraine in 1870. Very plain it
is to see now, and very sad, why the small separate German states that
had indeed produced their giants--their Luthers, Goethes,
Beethovens--but had always suffered military defeat, had been the
shambles of their conquerors for centuries, should after 1870 hail
their new-created Emperor. Had he not led them united to the first
glory and conquest they had ever known? Had he not got them back
Alsace and Lorraine, which France had stolen from them two hundred
years ago? So they handed their soul to the Hohenzollern. This marks
the beginning of the end.