ome States.
We are accused of militarism. What is this new and terrible crime? Since
the years of the wars of liberation against France and Napoleon we have
had what amounts practically to universal conscription. Only two
generations later universal suffrage was introduced. The nation has been
sternly trained by its history in the ways of discipline and
self-restraint. Germans are very far from mistaking freedom for license
and independence for licentiousness.
Germany has a long past. She enjoys the inheritance of an original and
priceless civilization. She holds clearly formulated ideals. To the
future she has all this to bequeath and, in addition, the intellectual
wealth of her present stage of development. Consider Germany's
contributions to the arts, the poetical achievements of the period of
Schiller and Goethe, the music of Handel, Bach, Haydn, Mozart, and
Beethoven; the thought systems of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel!
The last decade has reawakened these great men in the consciousness of
the German Nation. Enriched by the consciousness and message of an
intellectual past, our people were moving forward to new horizons.
At that moment the war hit us. If you could only have lived these weeks
in Germany I do not doubt that what you would have seen would have led
your ripe experience to a fervent faith in a Divinely guided future of
mankind. The great spiritual movement of 1870, when I was a boy growing
up, was but a phantom compared to July and August of 1914. Germany was a
nation stirred by the most sacred emotions, humble and strong, filled
with just wrath and a firm determination to conquer--a nation
disciplined, faithful, and loving.
In that disposition we have gone to war and still fight. As for the
slanders of which we have been the victims, ask the thousands of
Frenchmen who housed German soldiers in 1870 and 1871, or ask the
Belgians of Ghent and Bruges! They will give you a different picture of
the "Furor Teutonicus." They will tell you that the "raging German"
generally is a good-natured fellow, ever ready for service and sympathy,
who, like Parsifal, gazes forth eagerly into a strange world which the
war has opened to his loyal and patriotic vision.
KARL LAMPRECHT.
REVEILLE
By JOHN GALSWORTHY.
[From King Albert's Book.]
In my dream I saw a fertile plain, rich with the hues of Autumn.
Tranquil it was and warm. Men and women, children, and the beasts worked
and played an
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