I
heard only the clamor of herds, the pack of intellectuals giving tongue
on the track whereon the hunter loosed them, and that insolent
Manifesto, in which, without the slightest effort to justify its crimes,
you have unanimously declared that they do not exist. And your
theologians, your pastors, your court-preachers, have stated further
that you are very just and that you thank God for having made you
thus.... Race of Pharisees, what chastisement from on high shall scourge
your sacrilegious pride!... Do you not suspect the evil which you have
done to your own people? The megalomania, a menace to the world, of an
Ostwald or an H. S. Chamberlain,[6] the criminal determination of
ninety-three intellectuals not to wish to see the truth, will have cost
Germany more than ten defeats.

How clumsy you are! I believe that of all your faults _maladresse_ is
the worst. You have not said one word since the beginning of this war
which has not been more fatal for you than all the speeches of your
adversaries. It is you who have light-heartedly furnished the proof or
the argument of the worst accusations that have been brought against
you; just as your official agencies, under the stupid illusion of
terrorizing us, have been the first to launch emphatic recitals of your
most sinister devastations. It is you, who when the most impartial of
your adversaries were obliged, in fairness, to limit the responsibility
of these acts to a few of your leaders and armies, have angrily claimed
your share. It is you who the day after the destruction of Rheims,
which, in your inmost hearts, should have dismayed the best amongst you,
have boasted of it in imbecile pride, instead of trying to clear
yourselves.[7] It is you, wretched creatures, you, representatives of
the spirit, who have not ceased to extol force and to despise the weak,
as if you did not know that the wheel of fortune turns, that this force
one day will weigh afresh upon you, as in past ages, when your great
men, at least, retained the consolation of not having yielded to it the
sovereignty of the spirit and the sacred rights of Right!... What
reproaches, what remorse are you heaping up for the future, O blind
guides--you who are leading into the ditch your nation, which follows
you like the stumbling blind men of Brueghel!

What poor arguments you have opposed to us for two months!

1. _War is war_, say you, that is to say without common measure with the
rest of things, above m