Page:The web (1919).djvu/470

 now there is no real revulsion of feeling against the men who have caused Germany's name to be a stench in the nostrils of the world. The soldiers returning from the front are cheered as heroes, though their hands are caked with the blood of innocent women and children. Not one of the groups scheming for advantage at Berlin has expressly repudiated the war. Not one has expressed horror at the violation of treaties.

Are these pages indeed bitter? They cannot be made bitter enough! We cannot sufficiently amplify and intensify the innate American horror at the revealed duplicity of this nation which we have fought and helped to beat. We find their spirit to have been one of fiendish ingenuity, their intellect of that curiously perverted quality to which attention has been called. Germany never has exulted more in the success of her armies in open warfare than in her success at stealth and treachery. Are these the men we wish to see marking our coming census maps?

We have nothing to fear from Germany. We have beaten the Germans at every game they have produced, and we can continue to do so. We are the victors and they are the vanquished. They made the vast mistake of being beaten in this war. There is no reason why we should fear them in the future, on either side of the Atlantic. Major H. C. Emory, a former professor at Yale, in a late address, rather colloquially voiced something of this feeling of confidence in his own country:

Let us get sane! Get over this German bug of thinking that somehow or other the Germans are superior. Morally they are greatly inferior, but people have thought that somehow, intellectually or in organization, they are better than the rest of the world. We have shown them that we can smash the German military organization, which we have smashed. There is an idea that the Germans can do us in business; that somehow this is a race that we cannot compete with on normally fair terms. Put that out of your head! They are a patient, hard-working race; they will work fourteen hours a day where a Russian won't work four. They will plod faithfully. But, gentlemen, they are dumb; they are stupid. They do not understand things. They do not get the psychology of anybody else; and a large part of their