coarse and vulgar jests.

For athletics they had their turn vereins in which men went through
hard, laborious exercises which made them muscle-bound. Their favorite
sports were hunting and fencing--the desire to kill or wound. They rowed
some but they knew nothing of baseball, boxing, tennis, golf or the
usual sports so popular with young men in England, France and America.
Aside from fencing, they had not a sport calculated to produce agility
or nimbleness of foot and brain.

Their emotions expanded and their sentiments thrilled at the spectacle
of war. Uniforms, helmets and gold lace delighted their eyes. The
parade, the guard mount, the review were the finest things they knew. To
a people trained in such a school and purposely given great burdens that
they might attain fortitude, war was second nature. They welcomed it as
a sort of pastime.

In the system on which Kultur was based, it was necessary to strike
deeply the religious note; no difference if it was a false note. The
German ear was so accustomed to discord it could not recognize the true
from the false. The Kaiser was heralded to his people as a deeply
religious man. In his public utterances he never failed to call upon God
to grant him aid and bless his works.

One of the old traditions of the Fatherland was that the king, being
specially appointed by God, could do no wrong. To the thinking portion
of the nation this could have been nothing less than absurd fallacy, but
where the majority do not think; if a thing is asserted strongly and
often enough, they come to accept it. It becomes a belief. The people
had become so impressed with the devoutness of the Kaiser and his
assumption of Divine guidance, that the great majority of them believed
the kaiser was always right; that he could do no wrong. When the great
blow of war finally was struck the Kaiser asked his God to look down and
bless the sword that he had drawn; a prayer altogether consistent coming
from his lips, for the god he worshipped loved war, was a god of famine,
rapine and blood. From the moment of that appeal, military autocracy and
absolute monarchy were doomed. It took time, it took lives, it took more
treasure than a thousand men could count in a lifetime. But the assault
had been against civilization, on the very foundation of all that
humanity had gained through countless centuries. The forces of light
were too strong for it; would not permit it to triumph.

The President of the Uni