Gems (?) of German Thought Part 16

428. A nice protector of outraged national rights!!! Thus Richard, Duke of Gloucester, appears with prayer-book and rosary on the terrace of the castle, thus Mephistopheles dons the mask of lawyer and philosopher, thus Iscariot kisses the Saviour.--"My German Fatherland," by PASTOR TOLZIEN, quoted in H.A.H., p. 142.

429. Never has the _ma.s.s-misery of war_ ... presented itself to us in such grisly shapes as in this terrible world-war, which has been forced upon us _solely_ by the commercial envy and the _brutal egoism_ of the Christian model-state, _England_.--PROF. E. HAECKEL, E.W., p. 27.

=British Vices--Cowardice and Laziness.=

430. It is the English who may justly be accused of militarism--the people who, in addition to Irish and Scottish hirelings (they themselves, as a rule, prefer to remain at home) place Hindus and Indian mountaineers in the field.--PROF. W. WUNDT, D.N.I.P., p. 143.

431. Envy is utterly foreign to the German nature. But _one_ exception we must now admit. We old fellows ... look with envy at the young, who are risking their fresh life and strength for the Fatherland. Of this envy, at any rate, we must acquit England: its best youth remains quietly at home, and wins victories in the football field, leaving it to salaried hirelings to shed their blood.--PROF. G. ROETHE, D.R.S.Z., No. 1, p. 11.

432. The doctrine of comfort, as a view of the world, certainly comes of evil, and a people who are filled with it, like the English, are little more than a heap of living corpses. The whole body of the people begins to rot.... In England to-day every trade unionist is stuck in the mora.s.s of comfort.--PROF. W. SOMBART, H.U.H., p. 102.

433. As soon as it comes to the sanguinary reality, the English hireling's heart drops into his breeches. And the English Scotchmen have not even breeches for it to drop into.--O. SIEMENS, W.L.K.D., p. 19.

434. Whence should courage come?... In our German soldiers it springs from honest German wrath. But the Englishman must shout himself into courage. When the first English troops landed in France, they sang gaily and interrupted their songs by shouts of "Are we down-hearted?"

Whereupon the English hireling sought to keep up his spirits by an answering shout of "No!" ... Only their own timidity suggests to the English such questions as to their courage. One need not be any great psychologist to realize this.--O. SIEMENS, W.L.K.D., p. 19.

435. The cunning and unscrupulousness of the pirate does, indeed, survive in the English sailor; he lies in ambush for neutral merchant-s.h.i.+ps[!], lays mines in the fairway of neutral neighbour States, and commits deeds of violence of the most manifold kinds; but the resolution of the pirate, the daring intrepidity in attack, he no longer possesses.--"GERMa.n.u.s," B.U.D.K., p. 43.

436. The great majority of the English Army are to this day Keltic Irishmen and Keltic Scotchmen; the real Englishmen do not enlist. In the English battles of the past, Englishmen of the n.o.bility no doubt were in command, but the armies consisted of foreign mercenaries, for the most part Germans.--H.S. CHAMBERLAIN, K.A., p. 51.

437. England might, in league with Germany, have _dictated Kultur to the whole world_ ... if she had not been _untrue to the Gospel of Work_!--PROF. A. SCHRoER, Z.C.E., p. 61.

438. The English race ... must always be stimulated by the infusion of new blood, otherwise it would perish of its own indolence.--PROF. A.

SCHRoER, Z.C.E., p. 21.

=Treachery to Germanism.=

439. England is now showing on what feeble feet its Germanism rests, how unsound, how profoundly unworthy of the German Thought it is. It cannot shake off its bitter accusers--its Shakespeare and Carlyle, its d.i.c.kens and Kingsley. It has committed treason against the spirit of its greatest men, who were filled with the certainty that the German Thought must conquer, and that this victory must be _the_ victory ... of Kultur, civilization and spiritual progress.--K.

ENGELBRECHT, D.D.D.K., p. 57.

440. Would to G.o.d Professor Engel were right in maintaining that the English are Kelts. Then we should not have to be ashamed of our brothers!--PASTOR B. LoSCHE, D.S.E.S.D., p. 4.

441. It is useless for publicists to encourage the popular belief that the English prove by their behaviour that they are no longer Teutons; for Teutons they are, and purer Teutons than many Germans.[42]--H.S.

CHAMBERLAIN, K.A., p. 45.

442. Does one German cousin fight against another? We good-natured idealists have always dwelt upon this German cousins.h.i.+p. The three-quarters-Keltic England has no feeling of common Germanism.--O.A.H. SCHMITZ, D.W.D., p. 15.

443. What about ... our dear cousins the English, those hucksters whose Germanism we have at last begun openly to question.... Though the English language is doubtless Germanic, that is by no means a proof that the Keltic b.a.s.t.a.r.ds have acquired the German nature (_Wesen_). We do not count the English-speaking American negroes as belonging to the white race.--O. SIEMENS, W.L.K.D., p. 18.

444. Against us stands the world's greatest sham of a people ... the Judas among nations, who this time, for a change, betrays Germanism for thirty pieces of silver. Against us stands sensual France, the harlot (_Dirne_) among the peoples, to be bought for any prurient excitement, shameless, unblus.h.i.+ng, impudent and cowardly [!] with her worthless myrmidons.--"War Devotions," by PASTOR J. RUMP, quoted in H.A.H., p. 117.

=Sir Edward Grey and his Colleagues.=

445. Abysmal hypocrisy ... the national vice has been incarnated for us in Sir Edward Grey.--PROF. G. ROETHE, D.R.S.Z., No. i, p. 14.

446. When that English gentleman, Minister Grey, who has a cancerous tumour in place of a heart, in the end has to reap the infamy he deserves, he will promptly cast it from him as dirt with his horse-hoof.--PASTOR TOLZIEN, in "Patriotic-Evangelical War Lectures,"

quoted in H.A.H., p. 141.

447. The Englishman treats the foreigner, when he does not need him, as thin air, when he does need him, as a piece of goods; consequently, when he sits in the Cabinet, he considers that, towards a foreign State, a lie is not a lie, deceit is not deceit, and a surprise attack in time of peace is a perfectly legitimate measure, so long as it serves England's interests.--PROF. W. WUNDT, D.N.I.P., p. 131.

448. Sir Edward Grey possesses in a singular degree the gift of carrying on business with complete control of all emotion and elimination of all deep thought. Every third word of such person is the untranslatable, elusive, "I dare say."--O.A.H. SCHMITZ, D.W.D., p. 14.

449. The untruthfulness and unscrupulous brutality with which the English Cabinet carries on the war place it far below the level of Muscovite morality.--"GERMa.n.u.s."--B.U.D.K., p. 35.

450. The English diplomatist of the type of Sir Edward Grey holds honesty in political matters to be a blunder and a sin. Therefore he usually expresses himself in a form which is capable of several interpretations.--"GERMa.n.u.s," B.U.D.K., p. 18.

451. Sir Edward Grey has for years presided over all the peace conferences--only to ensure the coming of the projected war; he has for years sought a "better understanding" with Germany--only to prevent the honest German statesmen and diplomats from suspecting that a war of annihilation had been irrevocably decreed; the German Emperor, at the last moment, had almost averted the danger of war--Grey, the unctuous apostle of peace, contrived so to shuffle the cards as to render it inevitable.--H.S. CHAMBERLAIN, K.A., p. 66.

_For "shuffling the cards" compare No. 371._

452. The President of the United States, Professor Wilson ... allows American munition works to supply our enemies with unlimited quant.i.ties of war material, favours the infamous design of England to starve out Germany, and rises in his "peace" speeches to a height of political and religious hypocrisy in no way inferior to that attained by the English "million-murderer" Grey.--PROF. E. HAECKEL, E.W., p. 61.

=Britain's Great Illusion.=[43]

453. The English regard themselves as the Chosen People, towards which all others are predestined to stand in a relation of more or less complete dependence.--PROF. U. v. WILAMOWITZ-MoLLENDORF, R. pt. iv., p. 19.

454. Strange as it may appear to us, it is nevertheless unquestionable that all England has from of old been penetrated with the idea that her attainment of uncontested colonial and maritime power was not only to her interest but to that of the whole world, _the dominion over which G.o.d had Himself a.s.signed to her_, and that therefore all means to this beneficent end were permissible and well-pleasing to G.o.d.--J.

RIESSER, E.U.W., p. 10.

455. Just because the English found their national feeling on the consciousness of their kultural successes, and the belief that they alone are _G.o.d's chosen people on earth_, every desire of other peoples to a.s.sert equality of rights appears to their self-conceit an offence against the will of G.o.d.--PROF. A. SCHRoER, Z.C.E., p. 31.

456. The belief in the Kultur-mission entrusted to it by G.o.d, in preference to all other peoples, has grown into the very flesh and blood of the English people.--PROF. F. KEUTGEN, B.R.K., p. 7.

457. The English hold that they are literally descended from the ten tribes [!]. But we Germans do not base our relation to Israel on any such fleshly foundation. The German people are the spiritual, the religious parallel of the people of Israel, they are "the true Israel begotten of the Spirit."--DR. PREUSS, quoted in H.A.H., p. 213.

458. Many of the best, most unselfish and most modest Englishmen pray to G.o.d in all good faith that He would at last open the eyes of the German people, and especially of the German Emperor, that they may see how wrong and even sinful it is to place any further hindrances in the way of the expansion of the Kingdom of G.o.d on earth by "His chosen people," that is to say, the English themselves.--PROF. A. SCHRoER, Z.C.E., p. 12.

459. The Briton regards himself as chosen by Providence, the elect of the Lord, entrusted with a special _mission on this earth_, and placed under the immediate protection of Heaven, with a first claim upon all the good things of the earth.--"GERMa.n.u.s," B.U.D.K., p. 11.

460. Our duty to ourselves, and to our English fellow-creatures--since we would fain be, not an imaginary "chosen people" but true children of G.o.d--is to give them such a thorough thras.h.i.+ng that they may once for all be cured of the fatal illusion that they have established a monopoly in the dear Lord G.o.d, and that the rest of humanity is destined only to serve as a stool for their clumsy feet!--PROF. A.

SCHRoER, Z.C.E., p. 70.

461. Perhaps the reason that England's power now stands in so great peril is that, in her self-deceiving vanity, she thought that G.o.d had guaranteed her the dominion of the world.--PASTOR M. HENNIG, D.K.U.W., P. 86.

462. It is a matter of fact that the greater part of the English people cherish the pathological imagination that they alone are the true pioneers of Kultur and culture.--PROF. E. HAECKEL, E.W., p. 115.

463. The English now a.s.sert the claim of _their_ Kultur to be the only existing, and, indeed, the _G.o.d-appointed_ summit of human development, which to attain would mean salvation for all humanity.

This is a positively grotesque mixture of national pride and religiosity.--PROF. A. SCHRoER, Z.C.E., p. 12.

464. "England uber alles" has in England a very solid meaning, as compared with our quite ideally conceived "Deutschland uber alles." An immense self-a.s.surance, partly reposing on the notion of being in a special sense G.o.d's chosen people, gives to these claims a certain inward foundation. In the consciousness of an alleged superiority of moral Kultur, the English aspire to rule the world.--PROF. R. SEEBERG, D.R.S.Z., No. 15, p. 28.

465. Alone among Kultur-peoples, the English know only themselves, and regard all others, without exception, as foreign, inferior creatures, towards whom Nature decrees that the laws of morality, as between man and man, should not hold good, any more than they hold good towards animals and plants.[44]--PROF. A. SCHRoER, Z.C.E., p. 49.

466. There are, of course, many sincerely pious Christians in England.