Page:The ways of war - Kettle - 1917.pdf/248



I confess that I am weary of these German Professors. Having deposed God—by stern decree of their theological Press Bureau—they felt that a gap had been created, and volunteered to fill it. But as a substitute divinity the Herr Professor falls a little short of perfect accomplishment. I have sat under or come in contact with a few truly great men among them, like Windleband of Heidelberg, and Pastor of Innsbruck. But the Haeckels, the Harnacks, the Euckens, and the rest mistook their trade when they went in for omniscience. These drill-sergeants of metaphysics understand everything except reality. The "fog of war," of which one had heard so much, was as nothing to the fog of peace into which they had plunged Germany and Europe.

You must remember the nature of the system of which they are the mature, show products. In a German university it is unusual for a student to take a degree. Our own institutions are appalling enough, in all conscience; but there is, at least, a sort of scheduled, educational mediocrity to which even athletic demigods must attain. And there is