ocial opinion--was deliberately employed to stamp on the
German people one idea--the subordination of the individual to the
state, as the supreme and only virtue. How far has the policy succeeded?
Apparently absolutely. To the outside observer the old spirit seems
utterly gone. How far this policy has been helped by the cultivation of
the fear of the Slav, one cannot say. Looking at the map of Europe, one
sees that the geographical relation of Germany to the great Slavic
empire is not unlike the relation of Holland to Germany. Thus the
deliberate fostering of fear of the vast empire of the East has done
much to strengthen the hands of the Prussian regime in its chosen task.

Nevertheless, when one recalls the spiritual heritage of Germany: when
one thinks of Herder, Schiller and Goethe; Tauler, Luther and
Schleiermacher; Froebel, Herbart and Richter; Kant, Fichte and Novalis;
Mozart, Beethoven and Wagner; one feels that something of the old German
heritage must survive. When the German people find out what has happened
to them and why, that heritage surely ought to show in some reaction
against the present autocratic regime, after the War closes, if not
before, perhaps even to the extent of making Germany a republic. That
would be some compensation for the waste and destruction of the War.
Meantime Germany stands now, ruthlessly, for the dedication of Man to
the State.

One can understand why a Prussian minister forbade the teaching of
Froebel's ideas in Prussia during the latter period of the educator's
life. So one understands the hatred of Goethe because he refused
allegiance to a narrow nationalism and remained cosmopolitan in his
world-view. Similarly Hegel, with his justification of absolute
monarchy and his theory of the German state as the acme of all spiritual
evolution, was the acclaimed orthodox philosopher of Prussia, while the
individualist, Schopenhauer, was neglected and despised.

One must have lived in Germany to realize the absolute control of the
State over the individual--the incessant surveillance, the petty
regulations, the constant interference with private life. It was to
escape just this vexatious control, with the arduous militarism in which
it culminates, that so vast a multitude of Germans left their native
land and came to the United States--not all of whom have shown
appreciation and loyalty to the free land that welcomed them.

III

THE IDEAS FOR WHICH THE ALLIED NATIONS