w, that all that we shall be told
hereafter will be false; and let us unflinchingly adhere to what we
decide at this moment, when the glare of the horror is on us.

3

It is not true that in this gigantic crime there are innocent and
guilty, or degrees of guilt. They stand on one level, all those who
have taken part in it. The German from the North has no more special
craving for blood and outrage than he from the South has special
tenderness or pity. It is, very simply, the German, from one end of
his country to the other, who stands revealed as a beast of prey which
the firm will of our planet finally repudiates. We have here no
wretched slaves dragged along by a tyrant king who alone is
responsible. Nations have the government which they deserve, or
rather, the government which they have is truly no more than the
magnified and public projection of the private morality and mentality
of the nation. If eighty million innocent people select and support a
monstrous king, those eighty million innocent people merely expose the
inherent falseness and superficiality of their innocence; and it is
the monster they maintain at their head who stands for all that is
true in their nature, because it is he who represents the eternal
aspirations of their race, which lie far deeper than their apparent
and transient virtues. Let there be no suggestion of error, of having
been led astray, of an intelligent people having been tricked or
misled. No nation can be deceived that does not wish to be deceived;
and it is not intelligence that Germany lacks. In the sphere of
intellect such things are not possible; nor in the region of
enlightened, reflecting will. No nation permits herself to be coerced
to the one crime that man cannot pardon. It is of her own accord that
she hastens towards it; her chief has no need to persuade, it is she
who urges him on.

4

We have forces here quite different from those on the surface, forces
that are secret, irresistible and profound. It is these that we must
judge, these that we must crush under our heel, once and for all; for
they are the only ones that will not be improved or softened or
brought into line by experience or progress, or even by the bitterest
lesson. They are unalterable and immovable, their springs lie far
beneath hope or influence; and they must be destroyed as we destroy a
nest of wasps, since we know that these never can change into a nest
of bees. And, even though individuall