Gems (?) of German Thought Part 15

397. It is just as Schleiermacher said a hundred years ago: "These false islanders, wrongly admired by many, have no other watchword but gain and enjoyment. They are never in earnest about anything that transcends practical utility."--PASTOR M. HENNIG, D.K.U.W., p. 37.

(AFTER JULY, 1914.)

=Hymns of Hate.=

398. The war has laid bare the British soul, and a cold shudder goes through the Germanic Kultur-world.--"GERMa.n.u.s," B.U.D.K., p. 52.

398a. A hundred times more glowing than our steel, shall the mark of our contempt be branded upon thee. Wander thou as a lonely Ahasuerus, restless and unhappy, over land and sea. And if thou sayest, "I have flung the firebrand of h.e.l.l from earth to heaven, over sea and land, I have struck G.o.d and mankind in the face, and must now bear all their curses, an everlasting stigma seared with fire," then shalt thou speak the truth for the first time.--OTTO RIEMASCH, quoted in H.A.H., p. 49.

399. No people has done so much harm to civilization as the English.--O.A.H. SCHMITZ, D.W.D., p. 122.

400. King William I. issued on August 11, 1870, a proclamation to the effect that "Germany made war only against the armies of the enemy, not against the civil population."... There can be no doubt that, in the case of an eventual landing in England, the proclamation of the Emperor William II. to the English people would be couched in very different terms from those in which King William I. addressed the people of France.--A HAMBURG MERCHANT, E.S.S.H., pp. 8, 10.

401. England has nothing but the instincts of a beast of prey. This alone can explain her foreign and domestic policy of the past decades.

Her one object has been to increase her outward possessions and to let her own people starve.--K.L.A. SCHMIDT, D.E.E., p. 6.

401a. We willingly leave to the Britons their "freedom." It is nothing but the freedom of the English aristocracy to impose its will on the English people. It is the freedom of individuals, bought with the misery of millions and with the blood of hirelings.--PROF. W. V.

BLUME, D.D.M., p. 21.

_But see No. 432, on the disgusting "comfort" of the British workman._

402. We need not be ashamed of our hatred [for England]. It is rooted in our love for our innocently suffering fellow-countrymen. This sanctifies it. The Gospel does not say, "If any one strikes thy child on the right cheek, turn to him also the left cheek of thy child," It speaks only of one's own cheek. But it also speaks of the h.e.l.l-fire of which the offender stands in danger.--PROF. R. LEONHARD, D.R.S.Z., No. 16.

403. Our war expenses will be paid by the vanquished. The black-white-red flag shall float over all seas.... The whole world shall stand open to us, to develop the energy of the German nature in unhampered compet.i.tion.... We must break the tyranny which England, in base self-seeking and shameless contempt of law, exercises over the seas.--PROF. O. v. GIERKE, D.R.S.Z., No. 2, p. 23.

404. It is high time to shake off the illusion that there is any moral law, or any historical consideration, that imposes upon us any sort of restraint with regard to England. Only absolute ruthlessness makes any impression on the Englishman; anything else he regards as weakness....

_A corsaire, corsaire et demi!_--PROF. O. FLAMM, E.B., p. 400.

405. That foreign Kulturs offer us things of spiritual value, whether it be for our enjoyment or by way of a challenge, is true--always, of course, with the exception of England, which does not produce anything of spiritual value.--PROF. W. SOMBART, H.U.H., p. 137.

406. Our real fight is against England, the master of calculation. The miraculous fights against the commonplace, German spirit against English shrewdness, imperturbable heroism against crafty statesmans.h.i.+p.

Even those people who now think that they are fighting in the name of civilization against us barbarians, will shortly discover their mistake, and recognize the German miracle which has come to save the world from the spirit of calculating rationalism.--O.A.H. SCHMITZ, D.W.D., p. 105.

407. It is certain that the present generation of continental Europe, which has been for fifteen months a daily witness of Great Britain's _barbarous_ and infamous conduct of the war--the unexampled ma.s.sacres, the shameless political falsity and hypocrisy, the cowardly ill-treatment of prisoners and wounded!--cannot possibly make any move towards reconciliation.--PROF. E. HAECKEL, E.W., p. 113.

408. Hastily, and just at the time appointed for the murder of Franz Ferdinand, a friendly visit of battles.h.i.+ps to Kiel is arranged[38]--for the other attempts to spy out the harbour had failed.--H.S.

CHAMBERLAIN, K.A., p. 67.

408a. We have now ascertained that the plan for the a.s.sa.s.sination of the Austrian Crown-Prince was known in the Serbian Legation in London, and we shall certainly soon learn that it was known in other places as well.--K.L.A. SCHMIDT, D.E.E., p. 7.

409. That the blood-guiltiness of this "greatest crime in world-history" lies at the door of _England alone_ and that she has for more than forty years been plotting the _annihilation_ of her dangerous German compet.i.tor, has been established by numerous facts ... and, during the past three months, by the nave admissions of English statesmen.--PROF. E. HAECKEL, E.W., p. 113.

410. It is a pity that Nietzsche did not live to see the success of his teaching in England.... Britain may claim to have bred the Superman in the highest potency yet attained. He has made a clean sweep of the old British morality. He is coldly and unfeelingly inspired by a _frightful craving for power_, that wades through rivers of blood, and knows neither compunction nor pity. These are weaknesses which the Superman has conquered.--"GERMa.n.u.s," B.U.D.K., p. 9.

_But see No. 132._

411. It is a pity that men like Newton, Darwin, Shakespeare, Marlborough, Nelson, Wellington, Spurgeon, etc., should have their birth recorded in British registers. But they are exceptions. Among the millions of the Cities of the Plain, there must be a few just men.--PASTOR B. LoSCHE, D.S.E.S.D., p. 15.

411a. Death and destruction to the poison-mixers on the banks of the Thames! Cain, Ahab, Judas, Ephialtes, and the disciples of these master-a.s.sa.s.sins, whatever they may be called, are positive heroes in comparison with the ruffians who, jeering at all Kultur, have committed a crime against innocent blood which no words can characterize.--PASTOR B. LoSCHE,[39] D.S.E.S.D., p. 4.

412. The unexampled sorrow and need begotten by the gigantic world-war conjured up by England's brutal egoism--"_the greatest crime in the whole world-history_"--has inclined many suffering people to suicide.--PROF. E. HAECKEL, E.W., p. 39.

413. [t.i.tle.] "The Greatest Criminal against Humanity of the Twentieth Century, KING EDWARD VII. OF ENGLAND. A Curse Pamphlet (_Fluchschrift_),[40] by Lieutenant-Colonel Reinhold Wagner." He it was, he it was that kindled the world-war. He was the incarnation of the boundless selfishness and unscrupulousness of Englis.h.i.+sm (_Englandertum_). Opening words of above-cited pamphlet.

414. White snow, white snow, fall, fall for seven weeks; all may'st thou cover, far and wide, but never England's shame; white snow, white snow, never the sins of England.--G. FALCK, quoted in H.A.H., p. 50.

=British Vices--Hypocrisy, Envy and Greed.=

415. England thinks the hour has come for our annihilation. Why does she want to annihilate us? Because she cannot forgive our strength, our industry, our prosperity! There is no other explanation![41]--PROF.

A. v. HARNACK, I.M., 1st October, 1914, p. 25.

416. No other people has misused its riches as England has. With a hypocritically virtuous air, the British Chauvinist has for years been labouring to undermine the German name, and few can have divined with what means he went to work.--"GERMa.n.u.s," B.U.D.K., p. 47.

417. We cannot expect our enemies to try to do us justice--though we can, after all, sympathetically understand almost all of them, with the sole exception of the English, in whom the transparently base abstractness of the calculating business spirit lies beneath the level of humanity, and is so positively immoral as to be entirely outside the scope of sympathy.--G. MISCH, V.G.D.K., p. 8.

418. And then England! She does not, like France, send all her sons into the field, but sends specially enlisted troops. There lurks the impelling evil spirit, which has conjured up this war out of h.e.l.l--the spirit of envy and the spirit of hypocrisy.--PROF. U. V.

WILAMOWITZ-MoLLENDORF, R., pt. i., p. 7.

419. England is a Moloch that will devour everything, a vampire that will suck tribute from all the veins of the earth, a monster snake encircling the whole Equator.--"My German Fatherland," by PASTOR TOLZIEN, quoted in H.A.H., p. 140.

420. In the last attempt at an Anglo-Saxon philosophy, Pragmatism, the test of truth became simply usefulness. It is true that most Englishmen turned against it. Why? Not because this view seemed to them false, but because they thought it inadvisable, and therefore sinful, to blurt out the secret.--O.A.H. SCHMITZ, D.W.D., p. 121.

421. An English poet has invented a symbol that may well be applied to his own country: _The Picture of Dorian Grey._ In the eyes of the world, the hypocritical sinner seems to be endowed with the gift of unfading youth and beauty; but only because he has at home a sedulously concealed portrait of magical properties. In this the vices plough their furrows; in this the features are gradually contorted into a grisly image of guilt; until the day of judgment--the day of self-judgment.--PROF. U. v. WILAMOWITZ-MoLLENDORF, R., pt. iv., p. 16.

422. Oscar Wilde once wrote an essay on _The Art of Lying_, and his countrymen have since carried this art to a high perfection.--H. S.

CHAMBERLAIN, K.A., p. 10.

422a. Another vice has been developed to its highest pitch in this war: to wit, _lying_. England in particular has established a record in this department, even as against the Father of Lies, the Devil.--PROF. F. DELITZSCH, D.R.S.Z., No. 13, p. 20.

422b. Never since human Kultur has existed has such a _deluge of lies and slanders_, of fraud and hypocrisy, been poured forth as ...

"pious" England has spread abroad in the name of the triune Christian G.o.d. And this shameless hypocrisy must appear all the more revolting, since every one who is at all behind the scenes knows that this British _Christian G.o.d_ is in truth the _Bank of England_, the sacred "_Golden Calf_," the idolatrous wors.h.i.+p of which is the chief aim of _Pambritismus_, the lords.h.i.+p of England over all other peoples.--PROF.

E. HAECKEL, E.W., p. 59.

423. We _must_ be wroth, and we _will_ be wroth, with the whole power of our inner man. We will hate the will of the nation which has so basely set upon our peace-loving people in order to destroy us. We will hate the Satanic powers of arrogance and selfishness, of treachery and cruelty, of lying and hypocrisy. We will fight without scruple, and employ all means of destruction, however terrible they may be. We cannot do otherwise; but we do not hate the individual human beings.... The true, beneficent hatred applies to things, not persons.--_The Fifth Pet.i.tion in the Lord's Prayer and England_, by PASTOR J. LAHUSEN, quoted in H.A.H., p. 162.

423a. The curse of millions of hapless people falls on the head of the British island kingdom, whose boundless national egoism knows no other goal than the extension of British rule over the whole planet, the exploitation of all other nations to its own benefit, and the filling of its insatiable purse with the gold of all other peoples.--PROF. E.

HAECKEL, quoted by P. HEINSICK, W.U.G., p. 4.

424. It is an almost sinister self-contradiction: the individual Englishman, in private life, is by no means devoid of a certain outward decency, perhaps because he thinks it pays: but the public morals of England do not shrink from any baseness.--PROF. G. ROETHE, D.R.S.Z., No. 1, p. 14.

425. It is certain that it was in England that humanity first fell sick of the huckster view of the world. But the English ailment had spread further, and above all it had already begun to attack the body of even the German people.--PROF. W. SOMBART, H.U.H., p. 99.

425a. Covetousness, a huckstering spirit, a thirst for gain, calculating envy, hypocrisy--what despicable vices have they not become to us. We spit at them, we hate them, just because they are British.... Now we walk in gentle innocence through homely pastures, free from greed of money, stripped of all cunning, because--just because it is all British.--PASTOR D. VORWERK, quoted in H.A.H., p. 39.

426. The much-lauded missionary spirit was only a business enterprise, by means of which John Bull filled his purse.--"The Christianity of the Belligerent Nations," by PASTOR ERDMANN, quoted in H.A.H., p. 146.

427. England avers that she makes war against us without hatred, and thinks she is thereby giving proof of high civilization. It is precisely the proof of her cold-hearted baseness.... The self-controlled English gentleman, who makes unemotional war out of commercial envy, is more devilish than the Cossack. He stands to the Frenchman in the relation of the sneaking murderer for gain to the murderer from pa.s.sion. The gentleman-burglar of Conan Doyle expresses the soul of the nation.--O.A.H. SCHMITZ, D.W.D., p. 15.