thus was germany shut in from the world. even her socialist-democrats abjectly conformed. china built a stone wall, germany a wall of the mind.
to assert 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 assigned 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 classes 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 participants, 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 naïf and grotesque self-betrayal—as when the german ambassador 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 passengers:
"it has been the custom heretofore to take off passengers 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 title of a country of culture. france has passed 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 noble 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.
