Page:French Calvinism, German Lutheranism and the War.pdf/3

- 2 - understand the blunders and crimes of the German rulers. But we do not yet understand how it is that those blunders and crimes have been endorsed and glorified by an absolutely unanimous people. We understand the perversion of the German soul, its duplicity, its uncontrolled passion, its servility, its brutality, but we do not understand the German virtues, or rather we fail to understand how it is that those virtues of the Germans, their self-sacrifice, their passionate faith, their patriotism, their endurance, their patience, their long-suffering, how all those virtues have proved more terrible than their vices, because those virtues have been enlisted in the service of an evil cause. There lies, I submit, the deeper mystery of the German soul.

That mystery, I believe, can only be explained in terms of religion. The old saying: ‘Tell me what you believe and I shall tell you what you are", is true of nations as it is of individuals. It is only the religious conditions of Germany which will give us the key to her tragedy. That German mentality which is so baffling, so bewildering to us, is the result of the subtle working of four hundred years/