conception does not depend upon its truth, but upon the number and determination of those who hold it. A madman with a delusion is more dangerous than a professor with the documents.

We have not understood the working of this spring to which the German responds, for we have not, indeed, none of the Allies have, anything which remotely corresponds to it in our national life. There is no parallel conception, and, therefore, no parallel word in French or Italian or English. When, for instance, we use the word Americanism we think of the principles by which we live, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We have chosen them as the foundation of our life. It is an inclusive conception, any man may share in these blessings and share in them equally whether he or his forefathers were Englishmen or Italians or Germans or Russians. Not only are we pleased to have the individual do this, but we are gratified when we find other nations like our allies which adopt much the same policy of liberalism and democracy.

Not so with Deutschtum. It is the very op

posite. It is exclusive, intolerant; it is virulent international chauvinism. Its rights and privileges can be shared only by those who are of German blood. All others must recognize these rights. It is not something of their own election which the Germans have arbitrarily chosen to do. It is, so they believe, a mandate from on high. The Almighty has made them the strongest, the most scientific, the most cultured people in the world. The earth and what it contains belongs, or should belong, to them. They as the greatest and most just of peoples will see to it that these bounties are properly used and distributed. For this reason coal and iron deposits in degenerate France and Belgium will be administered by them. Could anything be fairer? We cannot, indeed they cannot, specify all the innumerable petty details of this new and necessary adjustment. "In short," as one of their spokesmen has said, "we must be allowed to be the judges of what we shall take.” *

*There is in Germany as in all other lands a great mass of the population which does not think, which has few ideas on domestic policy and none on foreign. The way in which the world is governed is to them a mystery. They know only that men must obey their rulers, and in

The Kaiser has said it:

"Great ideals have become for us Germans a permanent possession, while other nations have lost them. The German nation is now the only people left which is called upon to protect, cultivate, and promote these grand ideals.'

There is no question of this, but in order that you may not encounter ignorance and prejudice let us ask almost any German, even the most intelligent. What will Adolf Lasson, professor of philosophy at the University of Berlin, have to say?

"One cannot rest neutral in relationship to Germany and the German people. Either one must consider Germany as the most perfect political creation that history has known, or must approve her destruction, her extermination. A man who is not a German knows nothing of Germany. We are morally and inGermany they have a far higher respect for constituted authority than in other lands. If ignorance is innocence, this large group may be absolved from the guilt of this war. There is another group of intelligent Germans who do not agree with the conceptions set forth. Numerically this group is probably a large one, but it has shown itself to be a fairly impotent party of protest. When we attribute the foregoing and following ideas to Germany, therefore, these exceptions must be made, but we must remember that these ideas are held consciously by the ruling class that are Germany, and are unconsciously accepted by the obedient great mass of the unthinking. They provide the motivation for Germany's acts of aggression.

tellectually superior to all, without peers. It is the same with our organizations and with our institutions."

Or Ernst Haeckel, of Jena, the most widely known of German biologists:

"One single highly cultivated German warrior of those who are, alas, falling in thousands represents a higher intellectual and moral life value than hundreds of the raw children of nature whom England and France, Russia and Italy oppose to them."

The church turns in no divergent testimony. Doctor Paul Conrad, pastor of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin, tells us frankly, "We feel ourselves to be the bearers of a superior kultur," and he is sure that through the victory of their arms the Germans will bring about a new effiorescence of humanity "through the German nature," which will be a blessing to other nations as well. But why multiply such statements which you can gather from any humblest subject of the empire.

This conviction of superiority, this sense of Germany's special mission in the world is the source from which are derived her fatal notions

of the supermorality of the German state, the necessity for and the justification of militarism. These are the spear-points which she has been directing against America as well as against all other nations. Any state which interferes with the carrying out of her lofty mission in reshaping the world is guilty of aggression. That is why in German eyes this war is a defensive war, and the Kaiser was allowed to declare it as such without ever consulting the Reichstag

indeed, even the Bundesrath, and that is why the Germans entered upon it almost unconsciously and with enthusiasm, and carried it on with a ruthlessness that would have shamed the Hun.

It is not, therefore, in their minds a state like other states, one in the family of nations. It is the one great state and head of the family. The lesser must help to support it. "The Germans are a race of rulers, a Herrenvolk." Others, this means us, must be taught to obey. "Constitutions," as a German has said, "are not for the conquerors, but the conquered." "In a hundred years the American people will be conquered by the victorious German spirit, so that ▾