Gems (?) of German Thought Part 17

But either they are impotent as against the prevailing pa.s.sion, or they are blinded by the illusion of the "chosen people," and have therefore lost all power of sober self-criticism.--OBERLEHRER HERMANN SCHUSTER, D.K.K.

=Comic Relief.=

467. England understands by freedom only club-law, with the club always in her own hand.--H.S. CHAMBERLAIN, K.A., p. 22.

468. Since the Cromwellian rule of the sword, the army is so hated in England that an officer, going on duty from his home to the barracks, has to drive in a closed carriage.--O.A.H. SCHMITZ, D.W.D., p. 41.

469. I found everywhere in England, during my last visits in 1907 and 1908, a positively terrifying blind hatred for Germany, and impatient longing for a war of annihilation.--H.S. CHAMBERLAIN, K.A., p. 12.

470. England's army of postal officials amounts to 213,000, distributed through 24,245 post offices; the German Empire has 50,500 post offices and 305,000 officials. Now we can understand--can we not?--why England envies us.--PASTOR M. HENNIG, D.K.U.W., p. 39.

471. One finds in England no geniality, no broad, kindly humour, no gaiety. Everything--so far as the outward life is concerned--is hurry, money, noise, ostentation, sn.o.bbery, vulgarity, arrogance, discontent, envy.--H.S. CHAMBERLAIN, K.A., p. 60.

472. King Edward VII., while he was Prince of Wales, was often a guest of the London Savage Club, which is so "exclusive" that the Prince could not become a member.--O.A.H. SCHMITZ, D.W.D., p. 131.

473. Discipline within the parties is maintained with Draconian severity by the so-called "Whips" (i.e., _Peitschenschwingern_, lash-wielders); and woe to the member who should dare to express his own opinion!--H.S. CHAMBERLAIN, K.A., p. 17.

474. The English admit that, owing to the demoralizing influence of Edward VII., they are in a state of religious, social and economic decadence, but their illusion as to the incomparable superiority of England prevents them from tracing the evil to its true source, and as some one must be to blame for it, the fault must of course lie with the rapidly climbing Germany.--PROF. A. SCHRoER, Z.C.E., p. 34.

475. Every man wears the same trousers, every woman the same hat. I remember once being unable to find in all London a single blue necktie--blue was not the fas.h.i.+on. This would have been unthinkable in Berlin, Paris or Vienna.--H.S. CHAMBERLAIN, K.A., p. 18.

476. Thus science, which to us is a very serious matter, is to the Englishman, _like everything else_--except money-making!--like, for instance, politics, administration, the care of the poor, &c.,--_a private hobby, a sort of sport_.--PROF. A. SCHRoER, Z.C.E., p. 43.

477. On the day of the Oxford and Cambridge boat race, one walks, in the giant city of London, through literally empty (_buchstablich leere_) streets. From the oldest d.u.c.h.ess to the youngest chimney sweep, all are seized with the same mad enthusiasm for this event.--H.S. CHAMBERLAIN, K.A., p. 18.

478. [Puritanism leads to] that shrinking from the frank expression of emotions which (for example) explains the fact that cultivated England reads its great poet Shakespeare for the most part in editions in which everything is deleted that could give offence to a sensitive old maid.--PROF. W. WUNDT, D.N.I.P., p. 32.

479. At the parliamentary elections [before the war] nothing is spoken of but the hatred for Germany, which animates the speaker and his audience.--K.L.A. SCHMIDT, D.E.E., p. 10.

480. [British ignorance is] so horrific that a German can scarcely conceive it. Five years ago, in a town of 40,000 inhabitants, it was impossible to find a single man, who, for payment, could read English correctly to an invalid.--H.S. CHAMBERLAIN, K.A., p. 18.

481. Attention has recently been drawn, by an authoritative writer, to the fact that English biology and the theory of evolution, which have achieved so much celebrity, are in essence nothing but the transference of liberal middle-cla.s.s views to the processes of life seen in nature.--PROF. W. SOMBART, H.U.H., p. 17.

482. Is the n.o.ble land of Shakespeare fighting against us? Not at all; for Shakespeare we have long conquered. He has long been more a German than an English poet.--O.A.H. SCHMITZ, D.W.D., p. 15.

483. About the middle of the last century, England was in a fair way to save herself from decadence through the revivifying virtue of the philosophico-ethical influence of Germany.--PROF. A. SCHRoER, Z.C.E., p. 69.

484. England is incapable of producing a people's army (_Volksarmee_).[45]--H.S. CHAMBERLAIN, K.A., p. 50.

_See also Nos. 3, 146, 147, 174, 176, 178, 179._

=France.=

485. The English pirate-soul and French Chauvinism were bound to seek and find each other.--P. ROHRBACH, W.D.K., p. 14.

486. Beasts who spring upon us we can only treat as beasts, but the b.e.s.t.i.a.l hatred which impels them we must not allow to arise in us.--PROF. F. MEINECKE, D.D.E., p. 51.

487. At no former time could the French soldier be reproached with cowardice.... If his present conduct is so far beneath his reputation ... it is because he lacks the stimulus of enthusiasm, because he knows that it is not his country that is sending him forth to battle, but only an ambitious and short-sighted Government, because he is conscious that he is not fighting for a great and n.o.ble cause, but for a mean and dirty one.--W. HELM, W.W.S.M., p. 11.

488. For honour's sake another hundred thousand men may be sacrificed, but there must be an end to that. Then it is all over with France as a great Power.... These men [the French Ministry] or others like them must make peace! Some one must make it, for the bloodshed cannot go on forever. But what sort of a peace will it be? _Vae victis! Not till now has Bismarck's victory been complete._--F. NAUMANN, Member of the Reichstag, D.U.F., p. 8.

489. We will do well to leave to France the outward boundaries of a great Power, if only that we may not figure as the tyrants of Europe.--P. ROHRBACH, W.D.K., p. 28.

490. The defeat which France is now suffering is only the expiation of guilt which is already a century old.... The twenty years of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars had left the French a mere set of individuals who care nothing for the maintenance of their race: aesthetes and dandies, money-grubbers and Bohemians.--K. ENGELBRECHT, D.D.D.K., p. 51.

491. [As to the origin of the war] the French, as England's trusty henchmen, obediently repeat what England tells them. If Don Quixote rides at the windmills, Sancho Panza must keep pace with him.--PROF.

W.V. BLUME, D.D.M., p. 11.

_See also No. 3._

=Belgium.=

492. Belgium, the granary and armoury, is predestined to be the battlefield in the struggle for the Meuse and the Rhine. I ask any general or statesman who has seriously considered the problems of war and politics, whether Belgium can remain neutral in a European war--that is to say, can be respected as neutral any longer than may appear expedient to the Power which feels itself possessed of the best advantage for attack.--ERNST MORITZ ARNDT (1834), quoted in H.A.H., p. 22.

493. If Sir Edward Grey had urged neutrality [!] upon Belgium, he would have done that country the greatest possible service.--"GERMa.n.u.s,"

B.U.D.K., p. 36.

494. Where the people of Israel had to demand a pa.s.sage through foreign territory, they were expressly enjoined first to offer the inhabitants peace (Deuteronomy, xx., 10). Only when the right of transit was denied them, was the sword to be drawn and the pa.s.sage forced. In such a case ... Israel calls the wars in which it has to engage, wars of Jehovah. Its G.o.d is indeed a man of war, the Lord of the hosts of Israel. The Scripture even goes so far as to ascribe the subsequent corruption of the people to the fact that it did not completely annihilate the inhabitants of the conquered country.[46]--PASTOR M.

HENNIG, D.K.U.W., p. 6.

495. If Belgium takes part in the war, it must be wiped off the map of Europe.[47]--R. THEUDEN, W.M.K.B., v., p. 10.

496. How our adversaries understood neutrality is most strikingly summed up in the following pa.s.sage from the Paris paper _Le National_, which appeared as early as November 16, 1834 [!] "Le jour viendra ou ... la neutralite de la Belgique, en cas de guerre europeenne, disparaitra devant le voeu du peuple beige.... La Belgique se rangera naturellement du cote de la France!"--PROF. C. BORCHLING, D.B.P., p. 5.

497. A Belgian journalist who had ventured into Liege writes:--"The Germans behave quietly. What they require they pay for in ready money.

The pigeons which nest in the Place St. Lambert have a corner of the place where they are fed. The Germans have respected this corner, though they have occupied the rest of the place."--PASTOR D.M. HENNIG, D.K.U.W., p. 91.

498. See what the war has laid bare in others! What have we learnt of the soul of Belgium? Has it not revealed itself as the soul of cowardice and a.s.sa.s.sination? They have no moral forces within them; therefore they resort to the torch and the dagger.--PROF. U.V.

WILAMOWITZ-MoLLENDORF, R., i., p. 6.

499. The fate that Belgium has called down upon herself is hard for the individual, but not too hard for this political structure (_Staatsgebilde_), for the destinies of the immortal great nations stand so high that they cannot but have the right, in case of need, to stride over existences that cannot defend themselves, but live, as parasites, upon the rivalries of the great.--PROF. H. ONCKEN, S.M., September, 1914, p. 819.

500. Our Chancellor has, with the scrupulous conscientiousness peculiar to him, admitted that we were guilty of a certain wrong [towards Belgium]. Here I cannot follow him.... When David, in the pinch of necessity, took the shew-bread from the table of the Lord, he was absolutely in the right; for at that moment the letter of the law no longer existed.--PROF. A.V. HARNACK, I.M., 1st October, 1914, p. 23.

501. We were in the position of a man who, being attacked from two sides, has to carry on a furious fight for life, and cannot concern himself overmuch as to whether one or two flowers are trodden down in his neighbour's garden.--PROF. DR. W. DIBELIUS, W.W.E., p. 5.

FOOTNOTES:

[38] If this does not mean that England was an accessory before the fact to the murder of the Archduke, what _does_ it mean? The pa.s.sage is quoted with approval by Dr. Prockosch. _Englische Politik und englischer Volksgeist_, p. 34.

[39] This clergyman's pamphlet, of 24 pp., is one uninterrupted torrent of abuse.

[40] Doubtless a punning perversion of _Flugschrift_, pamphlet.

[41] It would be easy to cite 501 repet.i.tions of this dogma in almost the same words.