e hand of God, sinks into the heart like a precious balm. To
us, more than any other nation, is intrusted the true structure of
human existence. Our own country, by employing military power, has
attained a degree of Culture which it could never have reached by
peaceful means.

"The civilization of mankind suffers every time a German becomes an
American. Let us drop our miserable attempts to excuse Germany's
action. We willed it. Our might shall create a new law in Europe. It
is Germany that strikes. We are morally and intellectually superior
beyond all comparison.... We must ... fight with Russian beasts,
English mercenaries and Belgian fanatics. We have nothing to apologize
for. It is no consequence whatever if all the monuments ever created,
all the pictures ever painted, all the buildings ever erected by the
great architects of the world, be destroyed.... The ugliest stone
placed to mark the burial of a German grenadier is a more glorious
monument than all the cathedrals of Europe put together. No respect
for the tombs of Shakespeare, Newton and Faraday.

"They call us barbarians. What of it? The German claim must be: ...
Education to hate.... Organization of hatred.... Education to the
desire for hatred. Let us abolish unripe and false shame.... To us is
given faith, hope and hatred; but hatred is the greatest among them."

XII

Can the splendid land of Goethe unlearn its Prussian lesson and regain
its own noble sanity, or has it too long inhaled the fumes? There is
no saying yet. Still they sit inside their wall. Like a trained chorus
they still repeat that England made the war, that Louvain was not
destroyed, that Rheims was not bombarded, that their Fatherland is the
unoffending victim of world-jealousy. When travelers ask what proofs
they have, the trained chorus has but one reply: "Our government
officials tell us so." Berlin, Cologne, Munich--all their cities--give
this answer to the traveler. Nothing that we know do they know. It is
kept from them. Their brains still wear the Prussian uniform and go
mechanically through the Prussian drill. Will adversity lift this curse?

Something happened at Louvain--a little thing, but let it give us
hope. In the house of a professor at the University some German
soldiers were quartered, friendly, considerate, doing no harm.
Suddenly one day, in obedience to new orders, they fell on this home,
burned books, wrecked rooms, destroyed the house and all its
posse