PUPPET PROFESSORS
The professor, like the army officer, has long been a semi-deity in
Germany. Not only in his university lectures does he influence the
students, and particularly the prospective teachers of secondary
schools who hang on his words, but he writes the bulk of the
historical, economic and political literature of the daily Press,
the magazines and the tons of pamphlets which flood the country.
Years before the war the Government corralled him for its own. It
gave him social status, in return for which he would do his part to
make the citizen an unquestioning, faithful and obedient servant of
the State. As soon as he enters on his duties he becomes a civil
servant, since the universities are State institutions. He takes
an oath in which it is stipulated that he will not write or preach
or do anything questioning the ways of the State. His only way to
make progress in life, then, is to serve the State, to preach what
it wishes preached, to teach history as it wishes history taught.
The history of Prussia is the history of the House of Hohenzollern,
and the members of the House, generation after generation, must all
be portrayed a& heroes. There was a striking illustration of this
in 1913 when the Kaiser had Hauptmann's historical play suppressed
because it represented Frederick William III. in true light, as
putty in the hands of Napoleon.
There is a small group of German professors interested solely in
scientific research, such as Professor Roentgen and the late
Professor Ehrlich, which we exclude from the "puppet professors."
Such men succeed through sheer ability and their results are their
diplomas before the world. Neither shoulder-knots nor medals
pinned in rows across their breasts would contribute one iota to
their success, nor make that success the more glittering once it is
achieved.
One of these, a Bavarian of the old school, a thoughtful, liberal
man who had travelled widely, told me that he deplored the depths
of mental slavery to which the mass of the German professors had
sunk. "They are living on the reputation made by us scientists,"
he declared. "They write volumes and they go about preaching
through the land, but they contribute nothing, absolutely nothing,
to the uplifting of humanity and of the country." He told me of
how Government spies before the war and during it watch professors
who are suspected of having independent ways of thought, and for
the slightest "offence" such as being in the audience of a Social
Democratic lecture (this before the war, of course; such meetings
are forbidden now) they are put on the official black-list and
promotion is closed to them for ever.
In warring Germany I found professors vying with one another to sow
hatred among the people, to show that Germany is always right, and
that she is fighting a war of defence, which she tried to avoid by
every means in her power, and that any methods employed to crush
Great Britain, the real instigator of the attack on Germany, are
good methods.
With the pastors, they spread the idea that "Germany is the rock
selected by Almighty God upon which to build His Empire." J. P.
Bang, the able Danish Professor of Theology at the University of
Copenhagen, writes clearly on this point. He says, when describing
Emanuel Geibel:--
"He has succeeded in finding the classical formula for the German
arrogance, which of necessity demands that Germanism shall be
placed above everything else in the world, and at the same time in
giving this arrogance such an expression that it shall not conflict
with the German demand for moral justification. This has been
achieved in the lines which have been quoted times without number
in the newest German war literature:
Und es mag am deutschen Wesen
Einmal noch die Welt genesen!
(The world may yet again be healed by Germanism.)
"The hope here expressed has become a certainty for modern Germany,
and the Germans see in this the moral basis for all their demands.
Why must Germany be victorious, why must she have her place in the
sun, why must her frontiers be extended, why is all opposition to
Germany shameful, not to say devilish, why must Germany become a
world-empire, why ought Germany and not Great Britain to become the
great Colonial Power? Why, because it is through the medium of
Germanism that the world is to be healed; it is upon Germanism that
the salvation of the world depends. That is why all attacks
against Germanism are against God's plans, in opposition to His
designs for the world; in short, a sin against God. The Germans do
not seem to be able to understand that other nations cannot be
particularly delighted at being described as sickly shoots which
can only be healed by coming under the influence of German
fountains of health. Yet one would think that, if they would only
reflect a little upon what the two lines quoted above imply, they
would be able in some measure to understand the dislike for them,
which they declare to be so incomprehensible.
"He also prophesied about the great master who would arise and
create the unity of Germany. This prophecy was brilliantly
fulfilled in Bismarck. After 1866 he loudly clamours for
Alsace-Lorraine. This he cannot reasonably have expected to obtain
without war; but when the war comes we hear exactly the same tale
as now of the Germans' love of peace and the despicable
deceitfulness of their enemies. 'And the peace shall be a _German
peace_; now tremble before the sword of God and of Germany ye who
are strong in impiety and fruitful in bloodguiltiness.'"
Hate lectures have been both fashionable and popular in Germany
during the war. I was attracted to one in Munich by flaming red
and yellow posters which announced that Professor Werner Sombart of
the University of Berlin would speak at the Vierjahreszeiten Hall
on "Unser Hass gegen England" (Our Hatred of England).
I sat among the elite of the Bavarian capital in a large hall with
even the standing room filled, when a black-bearded professor
stepped upon the stage amid a flutter of handclapping and proceeded
to his task without any introduction. He was a Professor of
Hatred, and it soon became quite clear that he was full of his
subject. His lank frame leaned over the footlights and he wound
and unwound his long, thin fingers, while his lips sneered and his
sharp black eyes gleamed venom as he instructed business men,
bankers, smart young officers, lorgnetted dowagers and sweet-faced
girls, in the duty of hating with the whole heart and the whole
mind. I soon felt that if Lissauer is the Horace of Hate, Sombart
is its Demosthenes.
"It is not our duty (_duty_ is always a good catchword in German
appeal) to hate individual Englishmen, such as Sir Edward Grey and
Mr. Asquith and Mr. Lloyd George. No, we must go far beyond that.
We must hate the very essence of everything English. We must hate
the very soul of England. An abysmal gulf yawns between the two
nations which can never, and must never, be bridged over. We need
borrow _Kultur_ from no nation on earth, for we ourselves have
developed the highest Kultur in the world."
The professor continued in this strain for an hour and a half, and
concluded with the rather striking statements that _hatred is the
greatest force in the world to overcome tremendous obstacles_, and
that _either one must hate or one must fear_.
The moral is, of course, obvious. Nobody wishes to be a coward,
therefore the only alternative is to hate. Therefore, hate England!
I watched the audience during the lecture and did not fail to note
the close attention shown the professor and the constant nods and
sighs of assent of those about me. I was not, however, prepared
for the wild tumult of applause at the finish. Indeed the admiring
throng rushed to the stage to shower him with admiration.
"Das war aber zu schon!" sighed a dowager near me.
"Ja, ja, wunderbar. Ein Berliner Professor!" And the student with
_Schmissen_ (sabre cuts) across his close-cropped head smacked his
lips with, satisfaction over the words much as he might have done
over his Stein at the Furstenhof.
I investigated Professor Sombart and learned from authority which
is beyond question that he was an out and out Government agent
foisted on to the University of Berlin against the wishes of its
faculty.
The name of Professor Joseph Kohler is known, all over the world to
men who have the slightest acquaintance with German jurisprudence.
His literary output has been enormous and he has unquestionably
made many valuable contributions to legal science. Even he,
however, cannot do the impossible, and his "_Not kennt kein Gebot_"
(Necessity knows no law), an attempt in the summer of 1915 to
justify the German invasion of Belgium, makes Germany's case on
this particular point appear worse than ever.
The Empire of Rome and the Empire of Napoleon worked upon the
principle that necessity knows no law. Why should not the Empire
of William II.? That is the introductory theme. The reader then
wades through page after page of classical philosophy, biblical
philosophy, and modern German philosophy which support the theory
that a sin may not always be a sin. One may steal, for example, if
by so doing a life he saved. It naturally follows from this that
when a nation is confronted by a problem which involves its very
existence it may do anything which may work to its advantage. Thus
Germany did right in attacking the little country she had solemnly
sworn to defend, and history will later prove that the real
barbarians of the war are the Americans, since they are so abjectly
ignorant as to call the Germans barbarians for acting as they did.
So argues Joseph Kohler, who certainly ranks among the first
half-dozen professors of Germany.
There are a few professors of international law in Germany,
however, who have preserved a legally-balanced attitude despite
their sympathies. One of these wrote an article for a law
periodical, many of the statements of which were in direct
contradiction to statements in the German Press. The German
people, for example, were being instructed--a not difficult
task--that Britain was violating international law when her vessels
hoisted a neutral flag during pursuit. This professor simply
quoted paragraph 81 of the German Prize Code which showed that
orders to German ships were precisely the same. Were this known to
the German population one of the ten thousand hate tricks would be
out of commission. Therefore, this and similar articles must be
suppressed, not because they are not true, but because they would
interfere with the delusion of hate which saturates the mind of the
new Germany. I have seen articles returned to this distinguished
writer with the censor stamp: _Not to be published till after the
war_.
When a winning Germany began to grow angry at American munition
deliveries I heard much talk of the indemnity which the United
States would be compelled to pay after Europe had been duly
disposed of. Professor Hermann Oncken, of the University of
Heidelberg, made this his theme in a widely read booklet, entitled,
"_Deutschlands Weltkrieg und die Deutsch-Amerikaner_."
Professor P. von Gast, of the Technical College of Aachen, does
not appear to realise that his country has a sufficient job on her
hands in Europe and Africa, but thinks the midst of a great war a
suitable time to arouse his countrymen against the United States in
Latin America. He explains that the Monroe Doctrine was simply an
attempt on the part of the great Anglo-Saxon Republic to gobble up
the whole continent to the south for herself. "All the world must
oppose America in this attempt," he feels.
Then there is Professor Mendelssohn Bartholdy, who writes on
reprisals in the _Juristenblatt_ of July, 1916. It should be borne
in mind that he is a professor of law and that he is writing in a
book which is read by legal minds and not by the general public;
all the more reason that we should expect something that would
contain common sense. Professor Bartholdy, after expressing his
profound horror over the French raid on Karlsruhe, hastens to
explain that such methods can be of not the slightest military
advantage to the French, but will only arouse Germany to fight all
the harder. He deplores enemy attacks on unfortified districts,
and claims that the French military powers confess that such acts
are not glorious by their failure to pin decorations on the breasts
of the aviators who perpetrate them, in the same way as the German
Staff honours heroes like Boelke and Immelmann, who fight, as do
all German aviators, like men.
There have been many incidents outside of Germany of which the
professor apparently has never heard, or else his sense of humour
is below the zero mark.
My talks with German professors impressed me with how little most
of them keep in touch with the war situation from day to day and
from month to month. A Berlin professor of repute with whom I
sipped coffee one day in the Cafe Bauer expressed the greatest
surprise when he heard that a neutral could actually get from
America to Germany. I heard this opinion very often among the
common people, but had supposed that doctors of philosophy were
somewhat better informed.
During my conversation with another professor, whose war remarks
have been circulated in the neutral countries by the Official News
Service, he remarked that he read the London Times and other
English newspapers regularly.
"Oh, so you get the English papers?" I asked, fully aware that one
may do so in Germany.
"Not exactly," returned the professor. "The Government has a very
nice arrangement by which condensed articles from the English
newspapers are prepared and sent to us professors."
This was the final straw. I had always considered professors to be
men who did research work, and I supposed that professors on
political science and history consulted original sources when
possible. Yet the German professor of the twentieth century, is
content to take what the Government gives him and only what the
Government gives to him.
Thus we find that the professor is a great power in Germany in the
control of the minds of the people, and that the Government
controls the mind of the professor. He is simply one of the
instruments in the German Government's Intellectual Blockade of the
German people.