our souls can be satisfied with military drill and servile
obedience? We are soldiers because we have to be soldiers, because
otherwise Germany and German civilization would be swept away from the
face of the earth. It has cost us long and weary struggles to attain our
independence, and we know full well that, in order to preserve it, we
must not content ourselves with building schools and factories, we must
look to our garrisons and forts. We and all our soldiers have remained,
however, the same lovers of music and lovers of exalted thought. We have
retained our old devotion to all peaceable sciences and arts; as all the
world knows, we work in the foremost rank of all those who strive to
advance the exchange of commodities, who further useful technical
knowledge. But we have been forced to become a nation of soldiers in
order to be free. And we are bound to follow our Kaiser, because he
symbolizes and represents the unity of our nation. Today, knowing no
distinction of party, no difference of opinion, we rally around him,
willing to shed the last drop of our blood. For though it takes a great
deal to rouse us Germans, when once aroused our feelings run deep and
strong. Every one is filled with this passion, with the soldier's ardor.
But when the waters of the deluge shall have subsided, gladly will we
return to the plow and to the anvil.

It deeply distresses us to see two highly civilized nations, England and
France, joining the onslaught of autocratic Russia. That this could
happen will remain one of the anomalies of history. It is not our fault;
we firmly believed in the desirability of the great nations working
together, we peaceably came to terms with France and England in sundry
difficult African questions. There was no cause for war between Western
Europe and us, no reason why Western Europe should feel itself
constrained to further the power of the Czar.

The Czar, as an individual, is most certainly not the instigator of the
unspeakable horrors that are now inundating Europe. But he bears before
God and posterity the responsibility of having allowed himself to be
terrorized by an unscrupulous military clique.

Ever since the weight of the crown has pressed upon him, he has been the
tool of others. He did not desire the brutalities in Finland, he did not
approve of the iniquities of the Jewish pogroms, but his hand was too
weak to stop the fury of the reactionary party. Why would he not permit
Austria to pa