The Pentecost of Calamity Part 2

To a.s.sert that any great nation has in these modern days deliberately built around herself such a wall, may seem an extreme statement, and I will therefore support it with an instance--only one instance out of many, out of hundreds; it will suffice to indicate the sort of information about the world lying outside the wall that Germany has carefully prepared for the children in her schools. I quote from the letter of an American parent recently living in Berlin, who placed his children in a school there: "The text books were unique. I suppose there was not in any book of physics or chemistry that they studied an admission that a citizen of some other country had taken any forward step; every step was by some line of argument a.s.signed to a German. As you might expect, the history of the modern world is the work of German Heroes. The oddest example, however, was the geography used by Katherine. (His daughter, aged thirteen.) This contained maps indicating the Deutsche Gebiete (the German "spheres of influence" in foreign lands) in striking colors. In North and South America, including the United States and Canada, there are said to be three cla.s.ses of inhabitants--negroes, Indians and Germans. For the United States there is a black belt for negroes and a middle-west section for Indians; but the rest is Deutsche Gebiete. Canada is occupied mainly by Indians. The matter was brought to my attention because one of Katherine's girl friends asked her whether she was of negro or Indian blood; and when she replied she was neither her friend pointed out that this was impossible for she surely was not German." Information less laughable about the morals taught in the German schools I forbear to quote.

During forty years Germany sat within her wall, learning and repeating Prussian incantations. It recalls those savage rites where the partic.i.p.ants, by shouting and by concerted rhythmic movements, work themselves into a frothing state. This has befallen Germany. Within her wall of moral isolation her sight has grown distorted, her sense of proportion is lost; a set of reeling delusions possesses her--her own greatness, her mission of _Kultur_, her contempt for the rest of mankind, her grievance that mankind is in league to cramp and suppress her.

These delusions have been attended by their proper Nemesis: Germany has misunderstood us all--everybody and everything outside her wall.

Like the bewitched dwarfs in certain old magic tales, whose talk reveals their evil without their knowing it, Germans constantly utter words of the most naf and grotesque self-betrayal--as when the German amba.s.sador was being escorted away from England and was urged by his escort not to be so downcast; the war being no fault of his. He answered in sincere sadness:

"Oh, you don't realize! My future is broken. I was sent to watch England and tell my Emperor the right moment for him to strike, when England's internal disturbances would make it impossible for her to fight us. I told him the moment had come."

Or again, when a German in Brussels said to an American:

"We were sincerely sorry for Belgium; but we feel it is better for that country to suffer, even to disappear, than for our Empire, so much larger and more important, to be torpedoed by our treacherous enemies."

Or again, when Doctor Dernburg shows us why Germany had to murder eleven hundred pa.s.sengers:

"It has been the custom heretofore to take off pa.s.sengers and crew....

But a submarine ... cannot do it. The submarine is a frail craft and may easily be rammed, and a speedy ship is capable of running away from it."

No more than the dwarf has Germany any conception what such candid words reveal of herself to ears outside her Teutonic wall--that she has walked back to the morality of the Stone Age and made ancient warfare more hideous through the devices of modern science.

Thus her Nemesis is to misunderstand the world. She blundered as to what Belgium would do, what France would do, what Russia would do; and she most desperately blundered as to what England would do. And she expected American sympathy.

Summarized thus, the Prussianizing of Germany seems fantastic; fantastic, too, and not of the real world, the utter credulity, the abject, fervent faith of the hypnotized young men. Yet here are a young German's recent words. I have seen his letter, written to a friend of mine. He was tutor to my friend's children. Delightful, of admirable education, there was no sign in him of hypnotism. He went home to fight.

There he inhaled afresh the Prussian fumes. Presently his letter came, just such a letter as one would wish from an ardent, sincere, patriotic youth--for the first pages. Then the fumes show their work and he suddenly breaks out in the following intellectual vertigo:

"Individual life has become worthless; even the uneducated men feel that something greater than individual happiness is at stake, and the educated know that it is the culture of Europe. By her shameless lies and cold-blooded hypocrisy England has forfeited her claim to the t.i.tle of a country of culture. France has pa.s.sed her prime anyway, your country is too far behind in its development, the other countries are too small to carry on the heritage of Greek culture and Christian faith--the two main components of every higher culture to-day; so _we_ have to do it, and we _shall_ do it--even if we and millions more of us should have to die."

There you have it! A cultivated student, a n.o.ble nature, a character of promise, Prussianized, with millions like him, into a gibbering maniac, and flung into a caldron of blood! Could tragedy be deeper?

Goethe's young Wilhelm Meister thus images the ruin of Hamlet's mind and how it came about: "An oak tree is planted in a costly vase, which should only have borne beautiful flowers in its bosom; the roots expand and the vase is shattered." Thus has Prussia, planted in Germany, cracked the Empire.

XI

And now we are ready for the Prussian Creed. The following is an embodiment, a composite statement, of Prussianism, compiled sentence by sentence from the utterances of Prussians, the Kaiser and his generals, professors, editors, and Nietzsche, part of it said in cold blood, years before this war, and all of it a declaration of faith now being ratified by action:

"We Hohenzollerns take our crown from G.o.d alone. On me the Spirit of G.o.d has descended. I regard my whole ... task as appointed by heaven.

Who opposes me I shall crush to pieces. Nothing must be settled in this world without the intervention ... of ... the German Emperor. He who listens to public opinion runs a danger of inflicting immense harm on ... the State. When one occupies certain positions in the world one ought to make dupes rather than friends. Christian morality cannot be political. Treaties are only a disguise to conceal other political aims. Remember that the German people are the chosen of G.o.d.

"Might is right and ... is decided by war. Every youth who enters a beer-drinking and dueling club will receive the true direction of his life. War in itself is a good thing. G.o.d will see to it that war always recurs. The efforts directed toward the abolition of war must not only be termed foolish, but absolutely immoral. The peace of Europe is only a secondary matter for us. The sight of suffering does one good; the infliction of suffering does one more good. This war must be conducted as ruthlessly as possible.

"The Belgians should not be shot _dead_. They should be ... so left as to make impossible all hope of recovery. The troops are to treat the Belgian civil population with unrelenting severity and frightfulness.

Weak nations have not the same right to live as powerful ... nations.

The world has no longer need of little nationalities. We Germans have little esteem and less respect ... for Holland. We need to enlarge our colonial possessions; such territorial acquisitions we can only realize at the cost of other states.

"Russia must no longer be our frontier. The Polish press should be annihilated ... likewise the French and Danish.... The Poles should be allowed ... three privileges: to pay taxes, serve in the army, and shut their jaws. France must be so completely crushed that she will never again cross our path. You must remember that we have not come to make war on the French people, but to bring them the higher Civilization. The French have shown themselves decadent and without respect for the Divine law. Against England we fight for booty. Our real enemy is England. We have to ... crush absolutely perfidious Albion ... subdue her to such an extent that her influence all over the world is broken forever.

"German should replace English as the world language. English, the b.a.s.t.a.r.d tongue ... must be swept into the remotest corners ... until it has returned to its original elements of an insignificant pirate dialect. The German language acts as a blessing which, coming direct from the hand of G.o.d, 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 n.o.ble 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 possessions. Its master is dead. His wife, looking on with her helpless children, saw a soldier give an apple to a child.

"Thank you," she said; "you, at least, have a heart."

"No, madam," said the German; "it is broken."

Goethe said: "He who wishes to exert a useful influence must be careful to insult nothing.... We are become too humane to enjoy the triumphs of Caesar." Ninety years after he said this Germany took the Belgian women from their ruined villages--some of these women being so infirm that for months they had not been out-of-doors--and loaded them on trains like cattle, and during several weeks exposed them publicly to the jeers and scoffs and insults of German crowds through city after city.

Perhaps the German soldier whose heart was broken by Louvain will be one of a legion, and thus, perhaps, through thousands of broken German hearts, Germany may become herself again. She has hurled calamity on a continent. She has struck to pieces a Europe whose very unpreparedness answers her ridiculous falsehood that she was attacked first. Never shall Europe be again as it was. Our brains, could they take in the whole of this war, would burst.

But Calamity has its Pentecost. When its mighty wind rushed over Belgium and France, and its tongues of fire sat on each of them, they, too, like the apostles in the New Testament, began to speak as the Spirit gave them utterance. Their words and deeds have filled the world with a splendor the world had lost. The flesh, that has dominated our day and generation, fell away in the presence of the Spirit. I have heard Belgians bless the martyrdom and awakening of their nation. They have said:

"Do not talk of our suffering; talk of our glory. We have found ourselves."

Frenchmen have said to me: "For forty-four years we have been unhappy, in darkness, without health, without faith, believing the true France dead. Resurrection has come to us." I heard the French Amba.s.sador, Jules Jusserand, say in a n.o.ble speech: "George Eliot profoundly observes that to every man comes a crisis when in a moment, without chance for reflection, he must decide and act instantly. What determines his decision? His whole past, the daily choices between good and evil that he has made throughout his previous years--these determine his decision. Such a crisis fell in a moment on France; she acted instantly, true to her historic honor and courage."

Every day deeds of faith, love and renunciation are done by the score and the hundred which will never be recorded, and every one of which is n.o.ble enough to make an immortal song. All over the broken map of Europe, through stricken thousands of square miles, such deeds are being done by Servians, Russians, Poles, Belgians, French and English,--yes, and Germans too,--the souls of men and women rising above their bodies, flinging them away for the sake of a cause. Think of one incident only, only one of the white-hot gleams of the Spirit that have reached us from the raging furnace. Out from the burning cathedral of Rheims they were dragging the wounded German prisoners lying helpless inside on straw that had begun to burn. In front of the church the French mob was about to shoot or tear to pieces those crippled, defenseless enemies. You and I might well want to kill an enemy who had set fire to Mount Vernon, the house of the Father of our Country.

For more than seven hundred years that great church of Rheims had been the sacred shrine of France. One minute more and those Germans lying or crawling outside the church door would have been destroyed by the furious people. But above the crash of rafters and gla.s.s, the fall of statues, the thunder of bombarding cannon, and the cries of French execration, rose one man's voice. There on the steps of the ruined church stood a priest. He lifted his arms and said:

"Stop; remember the ancient ways and chivalry of France. It is not Frenchmen who trample on a maimed and fallen foe. Let us not descend to the level of our enemies."

It was enough. The French remembered France. Those Germans were conveyed in safety to their appointed shelter--and far away, across the lands and oceans, hearts throbbed and eyes grew wet that had never looked on Rheims.

These are the tongues of fire; this is the Pentecost of Calamity. Often it must have made brothers again of those who found themselves p.r.o.ne on the battlefield, neighbors awaiting the grave. In Flanders a French officer of cavalry, shot through the chest, lay dying, but with life enough still to write his story to the lady of his heart. He wrote thus:

"There are two other men lying near me, and I do not think there is much hope for them either. One is an officer of a Scottish regiment and the other a private in the uhlans. They were struck down after me, and when I came to myself I found them bending over me, rendering first aid. The Britisher was pouring water down my throat from his flask, while the German was endeavoring to stanch my wound with an antiseptic preparation served out to their troops by the medical corps. The Highlander had one of his legs shattered, and the German had several pieces of shrapnel buried in his side.

"In spite of their own sufferings, they were trying to help me; and when I was fully conscious again the German gave us a morphia injection and took one himself. His medical corps had also provided him with the injection and the needle, together with printed instructions for their use. After the injection, feeling wonderfully at ease, we spoke of the lives we had lived before the war. We all spoke English, and we talked of the women we had left at home. Both the German and the Britisher had been married only a year....

"I wondered--and I suppose the others did--why we had fought each other at all. I looked at the Highlander, who was falling to sleep, exhausted, and, in spite of his drawn face and mud-stained uniform, he looked the embodiment of freedom. Then I thought of the Tricolor of France and all that France had done for liberty. Then I watched the German, who had ceased to speak. He had taken a prayer book from his knapsack, and was trying to read a service for soldiers wounded in battle. And ... while I watched him I realized what we were fighting for.... He was dying in vain, while the Britisher and myself, by our deaths, would probably contribute something toward the cause of civilization and peace."

Thus wrote this young French officer of cavalry to the lady of his heart, the American lady to whom he was engaged. The Red Cross found the letter at his side. Through it she learned the manner of his death. This, too, is the Pentecost of Calamity.