Page:Above the battle.djvu/48

Rh Régnier sing war hymns, Barrès and Maeterlinck chant paeans of hatred. Between a fugue of Bach and the organ which thunders Deutschland über Alles, Wundt, the aged philosopher of eighty-two calls, with his quavering voice, the students of Leipzig to the holy war. And each nation hurls at the other the name "Barbarians."

The academy of moral science, in the person of its president Bergson, declares the struggle undertaken against Germany to be "the struggle of civilisation itself against barbarism." German history replies with the voice of Karl Lamprecht that "this is a war between Germanism and barbarism, and the present conflict is the logical successor of those against the Huns and Turks in which Germany has been engaged throughout the ages." Science, following history into the lists, proclaims through E. Perrier, director of the Museum, member of the Academy of Sciences, that the Prussians do not belong to the Aryan race, but are descended in direct line from the men of the Stone Age called Allophyles, and adds, "the modern skull, resembling by its base, the best index of the strength of the appetites, the skull of the fossilised man in the Chapelle-aux-Saints most nearly, is none other than that of Prince Bismarck!" Rh