the creatures of the Government, as obedient to orders as any Drill
Sergeant. They seem to have sold their consciences for place. Not a word
comes from them even of regret for the massacre of civilians on false
charges, for the wanton murder of children, for the wholesale rape of
women, the showering of bombs upon sleeping towns in sheer cruelty of
destruction. The intellectual energies of Kultur seem concentrated on
distorting the meaning of our dispatches and the speeches of our
statesmen, and in manufacturing for their people and neutrals venomous
falsehoods. German Geist today is a huge machine to cram lies upon their
own people, and to insinuate lies to the world around. Their system of
war is based upon lying at home and abroad, on treachery and terrorism.
They think that murdering a few civilians would terrify France into
surrender, and will drive England to betray the Allies. Their poor
conscripts are told that we kill and torture prisoners; their monuments
at home are bedizened with mock laurels; and neutrals are poisoned with
wild inventions.
For years past their public men, have
[Illustration: ADOLF VON HARNACK.
_See Page_ 198]
[Illustration: THEODORE NIEMEYER.
_See Page_ 206]
been tricking our politicians, journalists, and professors to accept
them as peaceful leaders of a higher civilization--- while all the while
their soldiers, diplomats, and spies (the three are really but one
class) were secretly courting our own royalties and society, studying
our naval and military defenses, filling our homes with tens of
thousands of reservists having secret orders to spy, to destroy our
arsenals and roads, and even planting out bogus industries and laying
concrete bases for cannon, to bombard the open towns of friendly
nations. We have been living unsuspectingly with a nation of assassins
plotting to destroy us. Did these professors of Kultur not know of this
elaborate conspiracy of Kaisertum, which unites the stealthy treachery
of a Mohawk or a thug to the miracles of modern science? For years past
the ideal of Kultur has been to lay down secret mines to destroy their
peaceful neighbors. Did these professors of the Fatheland not know this?
Then they are unable to grasp the most obvious facts--the life work of
their own masters under their own eyes. And, if they did know it, and
must at least know it now, and yet approve and glory in it, they must be
beneath contempt. Why argue with such hypocrites?
Not a few of us have known and watched this conspiracy for years. I have
preached this ever since the advent of Bismarckism and the new Europe
that was formed forty years ago. Not a few of us have foretold not only
the tremendous attack on the British Empire designed by German sea power
but the precise steps of the war upon France, through Belgium, and to be
executed by an overwhelming force of sudden shock in the midst of peace.
For my part, nothing in this war since July 30 has at all surprised me,
unless it be the foul cruelty with which Belgian civilians have been
treated. Indeed, in January, 1913, I wrote a warning which reads now
like a summary of events that have since happened. I was denounced as a
senile alarmist by some who are now the loudest in calling to arms.
Alas! too late is their repentance.
May I ask why our eminent academicians and scholars who still profess
"friendship and admiration" for their German confrères never even
suspected the huge conspiracy of which civilization has been the victim?
Why did they accept the stars and crosses of Caligula-Attila? Why
hob-nob with the docile creatures of his chancery, and spread at home
and abroad the worship of Geist and Kultur? Are they fit to instruct us
about politics, public law, and international relations, when they were
so egregiously mistaken, so blind, so befooled, with regard to the most
portentous catastrophe in the memory of living men? I am glad that they
see their blindness now--but why this sentimental friendliness for those
who hoodwinked them?
Surely this should open their eyes to the mountains of pretentious
clouds on which the claims of Kultur rest. I am myself a student of
German learning, and quite aware of the enormous industry, subtlety, and
ingenuity of German scholarship. We owe deep gratitude to the older race
of the Savignys, Rankes, Mommsens. Since 1851 I have been five times in
Germany on different occasions down to 1900. I read and speak the
language, and twice I lived in Germany for months together, even in the
house of a distinguished man of science. I study their theology, their
sociology, economics, history, and their classics. I am quite aware of
the supremacy of German scholars in ancient literature, in many branches
of science, in the record of the past in art, manners, and civilization.
But to have edited a Greek play or to have discovered a new explosive, a
new comet, another microbe, does not qualify a savant to dogmatize on
international morals and the hegemony of the world. Sixty years ago in
Leipzig the editor of a famous journal undertook to prove to me that
Shakespeare was a German. Our poet, he said, was the grandest output of
the Teutonic mind; nine-tenths of the Teutonic mind was German-argal,
Shakespeare was a German, Q.E.D.
With the vast accumulation of solid knowledge of provable facts there is
too often in the German mind a sudden bounding up into a cloudland of
crude and unproved guesswork. In the logic of Kultur there seems to be a
huge gap in the reasoning of the middle terms. A savant unearths a
manuscript in Syria, which he deciphers with marvelous industry,
learning, and ingenuity. Straightway he cries, "Eureka, behold the
original Gospel--the true Gospel!" and he proceeds to turn Christianity
upside down. He may have experimented on cultures of microbes for a
generation; and then he calls on earth and heaven to acknowledge the
mystery of the self-creation of the universe. We hear much of Treitschke
today--no doubt a man of genius with a gift for research--but what
ferocious pyrotechnics were poured forth by this apostle of mendacious
swagger. And as to Nietzsche, he was anticipated by Shakespeare in
Timon--a diseased cynic--
henceforth hated be
Of Timon, man and all humanity.
They seem to think that to have put the critics right about a few lines
in Sophocles, or to have discovered a new chemical dye, dispenses the
German Superman from being bound to humanity, truthfulness, and honor.
Charge them with the mutilation of little girls and the violation of
nuns in Belgium, and they reply: Yes! but think of Kant and Hegel! It is
treason to philosophy, they say, that a man who has translated
Schopenhauer should condemn Germans for burning Malines and making
captive women a screen for troops in battle. Kultur, it seems, has its
own "higher law," which its professors expound to the decadent nations
of Europe.
Let us hold no parley with these arrogant sophists. Let all intellectual
commerce be suspended until these official professors have unlearned the
infernal code of "military necessity" and "world policy" which, to the
indignation of the civilized world, they are ordered by the Vicegerent
of God at Potsdam to teach to the great Teutonic Super-race. Yours, &c.,
FREDERIC HARRISON.
Bath, Oct. 29.
*The Reply From France*
*By M. Yves Guyot and Prof. Bellet.*
_The following is the text of an open lettert addressed by M. Yves
Guyot, Editor-in-Chief of the Journal des Economistes, and M.
Bellet, Professor at the Schools of Political Science and
Commercial Studies, to Prof. Brentano of the University of Munich,
the communication being a reply to the recent German Appeal to
Civilized Nations on the subject of the war_:
PARIS, Oct. 15, 1914.
_To Prof. Brentano of the University of Munich_:
Very Learned Professor and Colleague: On reading the Appeal to Civilized
Nations, (among which France is evidently not included,) which has just
been sent forth by ninety-three persons declaring themselves to be
representatives of German science and art, we were not surprised to find
Prof. Schmoller's signature. He had already shown his hatred for France
by refusing to assist at the gatherings organized, a little more than
two years ago, to celebrate the seventieth anniversary of the Paris
Society of Political Economy, (gatherings at which we were happy to
enjoy your presence and that of your colleague, Mr. Lotz.) In his
Rector's speech at the Berlin University, in 1897, he declared that
German science had no other object than to celebrate the imperial
messages of 1880 and 1890; and he pointed out that every disciple of
Adam Smith who was not willing to make it a servant of that policy
"should resign his seat." But we felt painful surprise when, at the foot
of the said factum, we found your name side by side with his.
You and the other representatives of German science and art accuse
France, Great Britain, Belgium, and Russia of falsehood. Would you have
submitted, on the part of one of your pupils, to so grave an imputation,
so lightly bandied? Admitting you to be in absolute ignorance of the
documents published since the war declaration, you have certainly been
acquainted with the ultimatum pronounced by Austria to Servia. It must
have struck you with surprise; for it stands as a unique diplomatic
document in all history. Did you not ask yourselves whether the demands
of Austria did not go beyond all bounds, seeing that they insisted on
the abdication of an independent State? You learned that, in spite of
Servia's humble reply, because it contained a reservation, immediately,
without discussion, the Ambassador of Austria-Hungary left Belgrade, and
that the following day Austria declared war. You do not ignore the steps
taken by Great Britain and France, the demand for delay made by Russia,
and the reply of the German Chancellor "that none should intervene
between Austria and Servia." He elegantly qualified the attitude thus
adopted as "localizing the conflict."
Is there a single member among those who signed the document of
Intellectuals who has been able to believe--have you been able to
believe, Mr. Brentano, with your quick and perspicacious mind?--that
this reply from Berlin did not imply war as a fatal consequence; for any
nation accepting it was certain to be treated in future, by Germany, as
the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy treated Servia? How, then, knowing the
initial pretext of the war, are you able to realize that there was no
other relation between this cause and the effect produced than the will
of those who made use of it to provoke either a dishonoring humiliation
for the countries accepting such a situation, or a general
conflagration? How, then, do you, and the signatories of your appeal,
dare to state: "It is not true that Germany provoked the war"? You dare
to speak of proofs taken from authentic documents. Those published by
Great Britain, Russia, and Belgium are known. All agree; and they give
clear proof that the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum was pronounced with full
complicity of the Berlin Chancellery. They prove, moreover, that the
German Ambassador at Petrograd, fearing a withdrawal on the part of
Hungary, precipitated events while your Emperor kept himself out of the
way. Meanwhile, your General Staff had, in underhanded manner, mobilized
a portion of its troops, by individual call, while in France we waited,
unable to imagine that the German Government had resolved to engage in
European war without motives. In the pocketbooks of your reservists have
been found forms calling them to the army long before the end of July.
Our friend and colleague, Courcelle-Seneuil, has seen the military book
of a German living in Switzerland, at Bex, containing this call.
*Bismarckian Loyalty.*
Correspondence of official nature has been stopped at the Cape, which
should have reached in full time officers of the German Navy, warning
them to prepare for mid-July. Such advance taken by your troops has
rendered the task the more difficult for ours. We were very simple, for
we believed in the affirmations of your statesmen. You state that these
are loyal war methods; so be it. That belongs to the diplomatic rules of
loyalty bequeathed by Bismarck to his successors. But to attempt to
carry on this falsehood, you have no longer the excuse of its utility.
It is clear to all, except, it seems, the representatives of science and
art in Germany, who are sufficiently devoid of perspicacity to ignore
it.
They affirm, moreover, that Germany has not violated the neutrality of
Belgium; she merely contented herself with "taking the first step."
Beyond the authentic proofs which have been published, we would draw
your attention to an undeniable fact. Trusting in the treaty which
guaranteed Belgium neutrality--and at the foot of which figured
Germany's signature--in the promise made a short while ago to the King
of the Belgians by your Emperor, we unfortunately left our northern
frontier unguarded. You must be aware, professor, that the English did
not move until Belgian soil had been effectively violated. It is true
that we knew the plan of campaign set forth by Gen. Bernhardi, but we
naïvely believed that, whatever might be the opinion of a General, the
Chancellor of the Empire would consider a treaty bearing the imperial
signature as something more than a mere "bit of paper." Germany has also
been untrue to her signature by violating the treaty of neutrality of
Luxembourg. You forgot to state that there also you only "took the first
step." Your appeal echoes the German papers, which declare that it was
the Belgians, and particularly the women, who "began against your
troops." An American paper replied by stating that if it was the Belgian
women who attacked German soldiers on Belgian soil, what were the
soldiers doing there? The truth is that your troops, obeying their
officers, as is proved by papers which have been seized and which you
would find quoted in the report presented by the Belgian Commission to
President Wilson, have executed orders which seem inspired by the
ferocious inscriptions of Assyrian Kings, no doubt exhumed on the Bagdad
railway line; and you think it quite natural that massacre and arson
should have been perpetrated at Louvain because the civil population
fired on your soldiers; but an inquiry made together with the
representatives of the United States (whom you deign to consider
sufficiently to ask them to represent your defenses) proved that the
civil population was unarmed. If you today approve of the burning of the
Louvain Library, have you until now approved of the destruction of the
library at Alexandria? It is true there was no Deutsch Kultur there. The
result of German culture as regards military matters is to place your
soldiers on a stratum of civilization anterior to that of the Vandals,
who, when taking Hippone, spared the library.
In Paris, if one of us passing, on Friday, Oct. 9, in the Rue
d'Edimbourg, to an office of the Societe d'Economie Politique, situated
at No. 14, had passed near to that address, he might have been murdered
by a bomb thrown from one of your Taubes on the civil population of a
town whose bombarding had not been notified. Another Taube caused,
through the throwing of a bomb, a fire at the Cathedral of Notre Dame.
You cannot, to excuse such an assault, invoke the pretext put forward to
excuse the destruction of the Cathedral of Rheims. No observer could
have caught sight of a German soldier from the top of the towers.
*Barbarian Soldiery.*
Your co-signatories and you express indignation because the civilized
world describes your soldiers as barbarians. Do you therefore consider
such deeds as those specified to be a high expression of civilization?
And here is the dilemma: either you are in ignorance of these deeds,
then you are indeed very careless, or you approve of them, in which case
you must make the defense of them enter into your works on right and
ethics. In doing so you would only be following the theories of your
military authors who have insisted on the necessity of striking terror
into the hearts of the civil population, in order that it may weigh on
its Government and its army so strongly that they may be forced to ask
for peace. But those of your colleagues who profess psychology must, if
they have approved such a theory, confess today that they made a great
mistake; for such deeds, far from forcing the people to cowardly action,
awaken indignation in all hearts and fire the courage of our soldiers.
Nevertheless, your military authors have not stated that theft was a
means of assuring victory. And yet the Crown Prince, your Emperor of
tomorrow, gathered together at the castle of the Count of Baye articles
in precious metals, belonging to a collection, which he had carefully
packed up and sent off. Some of your officers' trunks have been found
stuffed with goods which would constitute the stock of a second-hand
clothes seller. Do you and your co-signatories include in German science
and art the science and art of housebreaking? Are the law professors and
the economists willing to defend such a manner of acquiring property?
And, if so, what becomes of your penal code?
You and your co-signatories affirm that the present struggle is directed
against "German culture." If such culture teaches that the rights of men
include contempt of treaties, contempt of private property, contempt of
the lives of non-combatants, you cannot be surprised that the other
nations show no desire to preserve it for your benefit and their
detriment.
It is not by arms but by arguments and facts that economists like us,
faithful to the teachings of the physiocrats and of Adam Smith, have
sought to protect ourselves against it. On the eve of the war, at the
inauguration of Turgot's Monument, we set forth his ideas of liberty and
humanity in opposition to the German realpolitik. We hope that the
present events will cure those among our professors whom it had
contaminated, and that they will cease to constitute themselves
accomplices of that, form of Pan-Germanism which they introduced to
public opinion and to our legislation. The acts of your diplomatists and
of your Generals, and the approbation given them by you and other
representatives of German science, are a terrible demonstration, but
conclusive, of the dangers and vanity of German culture. You are its
true destroyers.
*Militarism and Civilization.*
"Without our miltarism," say you, "our civilization would have been
annihilated long ago." And you invoke the inheritance of Goethe,
Beethoven, Kant. But Goethe, born in the free city of Frankfort, lived
at the Court of Charles Augustus, which was a liberal and artistic
centre ever threatened by Prussia. But Beethoven was of Flemish origin,
and lived in Holland until the age of twenty-four, spending the rest of
his life in Vienna, and he has nothing in common with Prussian
militarism, so redoubtable for Austria. But Kant, if he was born and
lived at Könisberg, the true capital of the Prussian Kingdom, welcomed
the French Revolution, and when he died in 1804 it was not Prussian
militarism which had recommended his writings to the world.
But the solidarity which you establish between German militarism and
German culture, of which you and your colleagues claim to be the
representatives, is a proof of the confusion of German conceptions.
To present Goethe, Beethoven, and Kant to the world you surround them
with bayonets. In the same manner every tradesman and every merchant
throughout Germany has got into the habit of saying: "I have four
million bayonets behind me!" Your Emperor said to some tradesmen who
complained of bad business: "I must travel!" And he went to
Constantinople; he went to Tangier, after the speech at Bremen. In every
one of his words, in each of his gestures, he affirmed the subordination
of economic civilization to military civilization. He considered that it
was his duty to open up markets and assert the value of German products
with cannon and sword. Hence his formidable armaments, his perpetual
threats which held all nations in a constant state of anxiety.
There is the deep and true cause of the war. And it is due entirely to
your Emperor and his environment. We readily understand that the greater
number of "representatives of German science and art" who signed the
appeal are incapable of fathoming this fact; but this is not your case,
you who denounced the abuses and consequences of German protectionism,
and we remember that at the Antwerp Congress you agreed with us in
recognizing its aggressive nature.
In conclusion, we beg to express the deep consideration which we feel
for your science, hitherto so unerring.
*To Americans In Germany*
*By Prof. Adolf von Harnack.*
Citizens of the United States, ladies and gentlemen: It is my pleasure
and my privilege to address to you today a few words.
Let me begin with a personal recollection. Ten years ago I was in the
United States and I came away with some unforgettable memories. What
impression was the strongest? Not the thundering fall of Niagara, not
the wonderful entrance into New York Harbor with its skyscrapers, not
the tremendous World's Fair of St. Louis in all its proud grandeur, not
the splendid universities of Harvard and Columbia or the Congressional
Library in Washington--these are all works of technique or of nature and
cannot arouse our deepest admiration and make the deepest impression.
What was the deepest impression? It was two-fold: first, the great work
of the American Nation, and next, American hospitality.
The great work of the American Nation, that is, the nation itself! From
the smallest beginning the American Nation has in 200 years developed
itself to a world power of more than 100,000,000 souls, and has not only
settled but civilized the whole section of the world from the Atlantic
to the Pacific, from the great lakes to the West Indies. And not only
civilized: everything which has drifted to it has been welded together
by this nation with an indescribable power, welded together to the unity
of a great, noble nation of educated men--such a thing as has never
before happened in all history. After two or at the most, three
generations, all are welded together in the American body and the
American spirit, and this without petty rules, without political
pressure. In the definite frame of this people every individual
character fits in without coercion, becomes American and yet retains its
own quality. The world has never witnessed such a spectacle but it is
witnessing it continually now. On the one side it hears and sees the
fact that every alien after a short time announces, "America is now my
Fatherland!" and on the other hand the old country still continues
undisturbed the bond between them. Yes, here is at once a national
strength and freedom which another could not copy from you very easily.
*The Spirit of America.*
But, further: Among those who have wandered to your shores are millions
of Germans--several millions! For more than two years--where shall I
begin to relate--since the days of Steuben and of Carl Schurz--but how
can I name names?--they have been all received as brothers, bringing
their best; and their best was not lost. More I cannot say.
Furthermore, what sort was the spirit which received them? Upon each
one, without and within, that spirit has imprinted its seal. Concerning
this spirit I shall speak later, but for the present I will only say, it
is the spirit of common courage and common freedom! And from this unity
I saw had developed a tremendous contribution as the work of this
nation, a contribution to agriculture, to technology, and, as we of the
German universities have known for several decades, an extraordinary
contribution to science. And this contribution has been derived from a
combination such as we in Europe cannot effect, of the good old
traditional wisdom which has been brought down out of the history of
Europe and a youthful courage, I might almost say, a childlike spirit.
These two combined, this circumspection and at the same time this
courage of youth, which I met everywhere and which has stamped itself
upon all American work, is what I have admired.
And the second was the American hospitality!