had it not culminated before our eyes, the case of germany would be perfectly incredible. as it stands to-day, the truly incredible thing is that she should have made her spring at the throat of an unexpecting, unprepared world. now that she has sprung, the diagnosis of her case has been often and ably made—before the event, dr. charles sarolea, a belgian gentleman, made it notably; but prophets are seldom recognized except by posterity. the case of germany is a hospital case, a case for the alienist; the mania of grandeur, complemented by the mania of persecution.
very well do i remember the first dawning hint i had of this diseased mental state. it was wednesday, august 5, 1914. we were in mid-ocean. before the bulletin board we passengers were clustered to read that day's marconigram and learn what more of europe had fallen to pieces since yesterday. this morning was posted the kaiser's proclamation, quoting hamlet, calling on his subjects "to be or not to be," and to defy a world conspired against them. in these words there was such a wild, incoherent ring of exaltation that i said to a friend: "can he be off his head?"
later in that voyage we sped silent and unlanterned through the fog from two german cruisers, of which nobody seemed personally afraid but one stewardess. she said: "they're all wild beasts. they would send us all to the bottom." no one believed her. since then we believe her. since then we have heard the wild incoherent ring in many german voices besides the kaiser's, and we know to-day that germany's mania is analogous to those mental epidemics of the middle ages, when fanaticism, usually religious, sent entire communities into various forms of madness.
the case of germany is the prussianizing of germany. long after all of us are gone, men will still be studying this war; and, whatever responsibility for it be apportioned among the nations, the huge weight and bulk of guilt will be laid on prussia and the hohenzollern—unless, indeed, it befall that germany conquer the world and the kaiser dictate his version of history to us all, suppressing all other versions, as he has conducted the training of his subjects since 1888. but this will not be; whatever comes first, this cannot be the end. if i believed that the earth would be prussianized, life would cease to be desirable.
to me the whole case of germany, the whole process, seems a fatalistic thing, destined, inevitable; cosmic forces above and beyond men's comprehension flooding this northern land with their high tide, as once they flooded southern coasts; giving to this teuton race its turn, its day, its hour of white heat and of bloom, its temperamental greatness, its strength and excess of vital sap, intellectual, procreative—all this grandeur to be hurled into tragedy by its own action.
the process goes back a long way behind napoleon—who stayed it for a while—to years when we see the germany of the reformation, poetry, music, the grand germany, blossoming in the very same moment that the prussian poison was also germinating. about 1830, heine perceived and wrote scornfully concerning the new and evil influence. this was a germination of state and family ambition combined, fermenting at last into lust for world dominion. it grows quite visible first in frederick the great. by him the prussian state of mind and international ethics began to be formulated. by force and fraud he annexed weak peoples' territory. he cut poland's body in three, blasphemously inviting russia and austria to partake with him of his eucharist.
theft has followed theft since frederick's. his cynical, strong spirit guided prussia after waterloo, guided first the predecessor of bismarck and next bismarck himself, with his stealing of schleswig-holstein, his dishonest mutilation of the telegram at ems and the subsequent rape of alsace and lorraine in 1870. very plain it is to see now, and very sad, why the small separate german states that had indeed produced their giants—their luthers, goethes, beethovens—but had always suffered military defeat, had been the shambles of their conquerors for centuries, should after 1870 hail their new-created emperor. had he not led them united to the first glory and conquest they had ever known? had he not got them back alsace and lorraine, which france had stolen from them two hundred years ago? so they handed their soul to the hohenzollern. this marks the beginning of the end.
