Page:Great Speeches of the War.djvu/200

 Flooded with the new wine of its swift and sweeping victory, it swaggered up and down the parade grounds until it came to believe that the will of God was enshrined on its scabbard; that it was not good for the world to be outside its splendid jurisdiction; that to Germanize was to evangelize; and that if those whom it took in hand didn't like its method of regeneration—why, the only thing to do was to redouble the dose!

It had clanked and swaggered up and down so long that it had come to believe that it had only to rattle its sword and every one would at once fall down and in tones of abject fear acclaim its accession to the throne of world destiny and power. Deutschland uber alles!

This belief so obsessed it, that everything was subordinated to it.

Treaties, conventions, pledges! Pooh! They were the mere expedients of simple unenlightened fools, like Mr. Stead and myself, to whom revelation had not been permitted. There was no harm in signing them. Indeed, they might even be kept if military considerations permitted.

For the rest they were useful in this respect—they lulled silly people into a sense of security under cover of which you could prepare secretly and deliver swiftly the blow that was to extend your power, authority, and opportunity for Germanization.

Steeped in ignorance—unaware of the fact that a new dispensation had dawned—the civilized world might rise indignant at your perfidy and treachery. Nonsense! They must be taught that whom the Kaiser loveth he chasteneth.

So, full of this mad obsession, full of this frenzied infatuation, full of lust of power and conquest, Germany struck swiftly, blindingly, perfidiously—struck with the forces secretly organized for instant war, while yet the peaceful peoples were unprepared. Its perfidy and treachery were to be justified by its swift and crushing success.

Mr. Stead, over that act of bloody aggression, failure, ignominious and complete, is written. Might—fierce, relentless, ruthless—had failed to bear down Right.

It reckoned without plucky Belgium's heroic stand, I tell you. A thousand years from to-day they will still be singing in the cottages of the world the story of Belgium's heroism. Plucky Belgium! Its cities ruined! Its people homeless! Its altars destroyed!

Much, very much, these Thugs did, can never be atoned for.