Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/263

 —are we to believe them when they say that someone or other has decided upon such a grinding together of all the germs of what is human in humanity, in order to press the unresisting dough into some new form, and that so monstrous an act of brutality or enmity against the human race is possible in this age of ours? Even if, in the first place, we were willing to make up our minds to believe such an utterly incredible thing, the further question arises: By what instrument is such a plan to be carried out? What sort of people is it to be which, in the present state of European culture, shall conquer the world for some new universal monarch? For many centuries now the peoples of Europe have ceased to be savages or to rejoice in destructive activity for its own sake. All men seek behind war a final peace, behind exertion rest, behind confusion order; and all men want to see their career crowned with the peace of a quiet and domestic life. For a time they may be made enthusiastic for war even by the mere prospect of advantage to the nation; but when the call comes again and again in the same fashion, the delusion vanishes and with it the feverish strength it produced. The longing for peace and order returns, and the question arises: For what purpose am I doing and bearing all this? All these feelings a world-conqueror in our time would first have to stamp out; and, as the present age by its nature does not produce a race of savages, he would have to create one with deliberate art. But more would remain to be done. A man who has been accustomed from youth upwards to cultivated and settled countries, to prosperity and order, finds pleasure in these things wherever he sees them, if he is but permitted to be at peace for a little while; for they represent to him the background of his own longing, which after all can never