Page:America in the war -by Louis Raemaekers. (IA americainwarbylo00raem).pdf/30

 "Something's Wrong. She Doesn't Seem to Inspire Confidence"

It is Germany's "Kultur," her spiritual code, that is responsible for America's entrance into the war; her gruesome sacrifice to Moloch of all which distinguishes humanity from the brute and the savage. It is her philosophy which has made us her horrified but resolute foe.

The fruits of her spirit stand forth alike in her speech and acts. "Kultur is a spiritual organization of the world, which does not exclude bloody savagery. It raises the daemoniac to sublimity. It is above morality, reason, science," so wrote a Teutonic expounder in the first year of the war. "We have become a nation of wrath; we think only of the war. We execute God Almighty's will, and the edicts of His justice we will fulfil, imbued with holy rage, in vengeance upon the ungodly. God calls us to murderous battles, even if worlds should thereby fall to ruins," so wrote one of Germany's poets. "Whoever cannot prevail upon himself to approve from the bottom of his heart the sinking of the Lusitania, whoever cannot conquer his sense of the gigantic cruelty to unnumbered perfectly innocent victims—and give himself up to honest delight at this victorious exploit of German defensive power—him we judge to be no true German," so wrote one of her pastors. And for hideous, ruthless deeds which violate every sanctity and deify falsehood we need but cite her slaughter of children and the aged, her poisoning of wells, her shooting of nurses, her sinking of hospital ships, her brutal deportations and all the revolting sinuosities of her spy system.

It is this catalogue of crimes committed in the name of moral superiority that has incensed the American people. It is to combat "Kultur" which Germany extols as the quintessence of civilization, this gospel which constitutes military might the only inviolable law, that we have pledged our precious sons, our abundant resources, our supreme, indefatigable energies. If Prussian arrogance be not rebuked, Christian civilization fails. Hence the growing and embattled sentiment that a world in ruins yet free for man would be preferable to the sway of Satanic Teuton efficiency.

ROBERT GRANT.